From the Cornfields to the Gulf
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2015
There is growing awareness that climate change constitutes the principal environmental threat of our time, and that wrapped up in it are enormous threats to the global economic and social order as well.
Climate change belongs to the category "wicked problems,” difficult or even impossible to solve because of inconsistent, contradictory, and shifting features that can be hard to recognize and model. Whatever hope there is for solving wicked problems lies in collaboration among many people and usually a change in our mindsets and behavior.
In a non-technical talk, Scott Hagen, professor, civil, and environmental engineering at the Center for Computation and Technology at Louisiana State University, will discuss aspects of climate change, relating them to Midwestern agriculture and the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
The free public event is at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, in Joe Rosenfield '25 Center, Room 101. Refreshments will be served.
Grinnell welcomes and encourages the participation of people with disabilities. Rosenfield Center has accessible parking in the lot to the east. Room 101 is equipped with an induction hearing loop system. You can request accommodations from the event sponsor or Conference Operations and Events.
Scott Hagen
Hagen grew up on a farm south of the Amana Colonies, but his career path has led him to a focus on oceanic and coastal hydroscience. After farming for 10 years, he decided to return to college and earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Iowa in 1993. He completed a doctorate at the University of Notre Dame in 1998, researching hurricane storm surge and tidal modeling.
He worked at the University of Central Florida, where he remained for over 17 years. There, Hagen served as professor of civil, environmental, and construction engineering, building from scratch a program in tidal studies, and modeling and establishing the internationally recognized CHAMPS Lab (Center for Hydroscience Analysis, Modeling & Predictive Simulations).
The event is sponsored by the Center for Prairie Studies as part of its 2015-16 programmatic theme, “Agriculture.”