Join us on Thursday, February 15th at 4:30 pm PST for a seminar featuring Dr. Jonathan Proctor and Dr. Armando Alcazar. They will discuss the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the effects of the 2020 wildfires on wine quality in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA.

The seminar will be held in a hybrid format, with an in-person event taking place in the Dodson room at the IKB Library at UBC. For those unable to attend in person, a Zoom link is provided for remote participation.

Zoom link:

https://ubc.zoom.us/j/61332540655?pwd=Nk5VTUhYcmlXMVVuNnlpT2p3T1FvZz09

Meeting ID: 613 3254 0655

Passcode: 333190

Climate change and agriculture

From the big picture to the impacts of wildfires on wine in the Pacific Northwest

About the seminar:

The direct consequences of climate change have become increasingly evident on a global scale as we experience an unrelenting pattern of rising temperatures and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. Agricultural landscapes are intricately linked to climate; therefore, changes in climate patterns inevitably impact crop and food production. To address these challenges, crucial questions need to be explored. Notably, how is climate change shifting environmental conditions for crop cultivation and productivity? Additionally, how do extreme climatic events and resulting calamities affect agricultural systems?

This seminar will address how climate change is affecting important climatic parameters for agriculture such as temperature, soil moisture, and sunlight. It will also explore the implications of climate change for global agricultural productivity, and potential adaptation strategies. Moreover, this seminar will provide insights into the effects of the 2020 wildfires on the quality of the wine obtained from grapes grown in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA.

Biographies of the speakers:

Dr. Jonathan Proctor is an assistant professor in Food and Resource Economics

(Faculty of Land and Food Systems) at the University of British Columbia. He earned a Ph.D. in Agriculture and Resource Economics from UC Berkeley in 2019 and conducted postdoctoral studies jointly at the Harvard Data Science Initiative and the Center for the Environment. His research at UBC focuses on the development and implementation of methods to evaluate anthropogenic impacts on climate and their subsequent influence on global socio-environmental systems.

Dr. Armando Alcázar Magaña is a metabolomics senior research scientist and metabolomics manager (Life Sciences Institute) at the University of British Columbia. He obtained his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Guanajuato University, Mexico, and in collaboration with Sydney University, Australia, and Nagaoka University, Japan. His postdoctoral tenure at the Linus Pauling Institute (Oregon State University, USA) focused on metabolomics pathway analysis, method development, and biomarker discovery. At UBC, he is working on developing targeted and untargeted metabolomics methods to track biological pathways in honeybees and to fingerprint natural products.