Ancient plants examined by ecology center speaker

Hope Jahren, a professor at the University of Hawaii who studies ancient plants, visited Utah State University Wednesday as part of the Ecology Center Seminar Series.

Jahren spoke at 6 p.m. last night and will continue to interacting with students and faculty today until her second speech at 4 p.m.

“Dr. Jahren’s work on ancient and modern ecosystems is really exciting,” said Andrew Durso, co-chair of the Ecology Center Seminar Series committee. “She takes fossil plants and looks at their stable isotope chemistry to find out what ancient climates were like.”

Jahren said she is interested in how plants have survived through periods of climate change and how they will adapt to environmental change in the future.

“Our environment is changing a lot right now,” Jahren said. “What will that mean for plants as we move forward, not just in our lifetimes, but in 100, 200, 300 years from now?”

In addition to her background in research, Durso said Jahren was invited because she writes a blog about being a woman in academia entitled “Hope Jahren sure can write.” He said it might invite conversation among students.

Jahren said it used to be rare to be a woman in her field and that changed the way she did science.

“Isolation leads to independence, and I think when you don’t fit the mold, you have the opportunity to embrace doing things differently,” Jahren said.

She said being in academia is a lot of work, but it is important to “stay close to the part of it that you love.”

“I think that we always have to first and foremost keep in touch with how learning makes us grow as people,” Jahren said.

She expressed that there is always something new to learn, even though people have been studying the natural world for hundreds of years.

“Things are changing very quickly,” Jahren said. “It’s really a special time. There’s a really big opportunity to reinvent all of biology and ecology in the next 10 or 20 years. Being part of that is going to be a ton of work, but it’s also going to be really exciting.”

Jahren’s second speech will be at 4 p.m. on Thursday in Engineering, Room 101. It is titled “What can the carbon isotope composition of plant tissue tell us?”

Jahren is the fifth of eight Ecology Center Seminar Series speakers this school year. The next speaker, N. Thompson Hobbs, a professor from Colorado State University who studies communities of large mammals, will be at USU from Feb. 25-26.

— melmo12@gmail.com