Addressing Climate Change

Mentioning climate change is frowned upon by the newly-installed administration, so Dr. Eugene Kelly, one of the co-leaders of a national strategy to guide researchers focused on adaptation and mitigation, had to get creative. After all, politics may change, but climate trends march on.

Kelly, featured in the next Cambios Climate Change Speaker Series, at 7 p.m., Wednesday, March 5 at the Rio Grande Theatre 211 N. Main St., will deliver a free talk titled "National Imate-clay Ange-chay Roadmap: A Research Framework for U.S. Agriculture, Forestry and Working Lands." 

The playful use of Pig Latin, Kelly notes, highlights the irony of having to recast well-established scientific concepts while remaining focused on the research and practices aimed at protecting the nation's agriculture, forests and range lands.

"Our environments are undeniably changing, and it's our scientific duty to understand and adapt to these shifts, safeguarding the long-term prosperity of America's lands," Kelly wrote. 

Kelly, a soil scientist in the Soil and Crop Sciences Department at Colorado State University, serves as director of the Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station, was appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to a three-year term as chair of the U.S. National Committee for Soil Sciences.

He was also part of a team of Colorado State University scientists who organized and developed a National Climate Change Roadmap released in late 2023 and funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The roadmap, released at the annual meeting of the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, contains a comprehensive science agenda serving researchers, policymakers, farmers and practitioners. It was developed with input from hundreds of leading scientists representing 51 U.S. institutions across diverse disciplines.