The world-renowned sustainable land use scientist, Professor Jonathan Foley, will deliver the annual Macaulay Lecture at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute on Friday 5th June, 2009.

The lecture, ‘Living on a Shrinking Planet: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustaining Global Land Use‘, will address the challenges of managing trade-offs between immediate human needs and the long-term capacity of the Earth to provide food, clean water, and to regulate the climate.

Professor Foley’s work is at the forefront of research on complex global environmental systems and their interactions with human societies. He and his students have contributed to our understanding of large-scale ecosystem processes, global patterns of land use, the behavior of the planet’s climate and water cycle, and the sustainability of our biosphere. Using state-of-the-art computer models and satellite measurements his research teams analyse changes in ecosystems, land use, climate and freshwater resources across local, regional and global scales.

Speaking ahead of his lecture, Professor Foley, the Director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of the Minnesota, said, “Worldwide changes to land resources are driven by needs for food, fibre, water and shelter for six billion people. Global farmland and urban areas have expanded in recent decades, accompanied by increased energy, water and fertiliser consumption, and by biodiversity loss. Land use has generally been considered a local issue, but is becoming a force of global importance as these changes have increased human consumption of the planet’s resources, but undermine the capacity of ecosystems to sustain food production, maintain freshwater, regulate climate, and restrict infectious diseases.”

Professor Foley joined the University of Minnesota in 2008, after spending 15 years at the University of Wisconsin, where he founded the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE). He has won numerous awards and honors, including the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Award, the J.S. McDonnell Foundation’s 21st Century Science Award, an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship, and the Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America. In 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Professor Foley’s lecture will take place at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Craigiebuckler on Friday 5th June, 2009 at 2:00pm.

ENDS

Information for Editors

The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute was founded in 1930 and is an international centre for research and consultancy on the environmental and social consequences of rural land uses. With an annual income from research and consultancy of over £11m, the Institute is the largest interdisciplinary research organisation of its kind in Europe, and aims to provide evidence to help shape future environmental and rural-development policy on a national and international basis. For further information, visit www.macaulay.ac.uk .

For further information contact:

Clare Neely

The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute

Craigiebuckler

Aberdeen

AB15 8QH

Tel: 01224 395087

Fax: 01224 395010

http://www.macaulay.ac.uk/