Benjamin Laabs will present a lecture titled The Heat Is On: The Effects of Modern Climate Change on Mountains in Eisenhart Auditorium at the Rochester Museum and Science Center for the Monthly Meeting of the Adirondack Mountain Club – Genesee Valley Chapter.

As a geologist, SUNY Geneseo Professor Ben Laabs studies the geologic record of mountain snow and ice with the goal of reconstructing changes in hydro climate over a variety of timescales. His research, chiefly in the Rocky Mountains and most recently in the Sangre de Christo Range in southern Colorado in June 2014, has helped to identify the impacts of changing snow and ice on mountain environments since the last ice age ended 18,000 years ago. His work helps to link changes in the long and short-term shifts in annual snow and ice cover in mountain watersheds to climate change. In his first presentation to the Adirondack Mountain Club, Professor Laabs will share some key findings from studies of declining snow and ice in Glacier National Park, where the effects of ice on landscape evolution and alpine habitat are especially clear. Here, most of the iconic glaciers that popularized the park in the early 1900s have vanished, and even the largest that remain are projected to disappear within decades.

[source: Adirondack Mountain Club of Genesee Valley website, 2016-Feb-29]