[Applause]
good evening as you just learned my name
is Ellen Caterson and I’m a professor in
the biology department here at Indiana
University and I study birds so I study
bird evolution and I study bird ecology
and I study bird behavior
and I’m passionate about birds I really
love them
or their beauty or the marvelous things
they can do
and I’m worried for them and so I’d like
to tell you a little about what they can
do and perhaps recruit you to some of my
worry and some of what I think we can do
about it
a shore bird hatched in the Arctic we’ll
just a few weeks later throw caution to
the winds and fly 2,000 miles non-stop
to a place it’s never been
talk about uncharted waters
here’s the talk like parrots know what
the words mean when they say them so
some parents know as many as a hundred
words and can name 35 objects
some birds can solve problems using
insight they can make tools and use
those tools to make another tool and
then look at an apparatus and figure out
how to get that morsel of food they
really want
and birds are a lot like us they form
pairs and they raise offspring together
and some of them are faithful and some
of them Qi
so some of these worries that are facing
birds or worries that are facing me
because I’m concerned about birds are
climate change habitat loss cats half
cats cats are a problem skyscrapers
things that we build anthropomorphic
creations
so I’ve decided that I would like to
spend my remaining time as an academic
helping to conserve birds
but I’ve known that I can’t do that by
myself because it takes a team if you’re
to have any hope of making a measurable
difference so about the time I made this
decision President Michael McRobbie here
at Indiana University decided to enable
the knowledge resources here at Indiana
University and IUPUI to come together
and have the funds to be able to address
complex significant societal problems
and bring those solutions to the people
of Indiana
and the
first grand challenge as they’re called
was and is designed to cure cancer and
another grand challenge is addressing
the opioid crisis here in Indiana and
the third one is the one I’m here to
represent and so that is being prepared
for environmental change and that
preparation is whether we make it or
whether we don’t so I think it’s
definitely about uncharted waters and
I’m here to ask your help I think we
can’t tune out and I don’t think it’s
too late but we need to start and I
don’t mean next year I mean we need to
start right now
so we know that we’re facing an
unprecedented weather we know we’re
facing
from elongated growing seasons the rate
of a Lyme disease from ticks has
increased 430 percent here in Indiana in
the last five years six billion dollars
in agricultural losses to extreme
weather in the last five years so
there’s a problem but you know it’s hard
for us to get our mind around things
like that and part of that problem I
think is we don’t live that long the
problems unfold over a longer period of
time then our snapshot view of them and
so the urgency can be difficult unless
you believe in charts and graphs so
my husband and I because I have been
around for a while
we’re both bird lovers and this bird the
American Kestrel is one that we used to
play a game we’d be driving from
Bloomington to Indianapolis to the
airport and we’d say how many do we
think we’ll see and we might guess 10 or
12 of these beautiful birds and when I
Drive to the airport now
I don’t see any kestrels and the sky is
really pretty barren of chimney Swifts
and of Nighthawks and of other birds
that used to be abundant but are not so
visible and I know because my baseline
was set when I was 20 years old the age
really of many of you here expect in the
audience but I’ve gotten a chance to
live 50 more years so I can feel the
difference but if you’re just starting
you may not have that visceral sense
that the winners are a lot warmer than
they used to be and the summers are a
lot hotter than they used to be and the
springs come a lot earlier than they
used to but it may be your normal so
envisioning the future is hard for human
beings and one way to attempt to
overcome that limitation is to look back
because if we see how much has changed
say in the last and 200 years then we
might be able to imagine at least the
extent of the change it could take place
in the next 200 years
or the next 50 for most of you will have
retired so it’s I think it’s worth
thinking about
so a hundred years ago they were
celebrating the founding of the state of
Indiana a hundred years before that so
this poster dates from the first
Centennial and what you see is no cars
right
no n-c-double-a no Indy 500 what you see
is kind of stove awakens and a lot has
changed since then in the last 200 years
we in Indiana cleared the forests 70
percent of Indiana’s forests are now
gone we drained the wetlands so 5,300
square miles of wetland were drained we
extirpated the fauna the bison the elk
the Cougars the wolves going out over
time who expects to see a wolf when they
go out right but they used to live here
and the population size changed
dramatically from say a thousand
Europeans to three million actually two
and a half a hundred years ago the 6.6
million now and we faved a great deal of
the land and built cities and we had a
sense of abundance so it isn’t really we
that I’m talking about but it’s the
people who live on this land for the
preceding 200 years they give us a
chance to think how much has changed and
hence the kind of change that we need to
be prepared for and so being prepared
for change is what the grand challenge
that I represent is about and here’s the
team that I joined so you may recognize
President McRobbie and vice president
Rick
and then collaborators that I have the
great pleasure of working with really
smart people who have very diverse kinds
of knowledge and expertise but care
about being prepared for environmental
change
so they come from IU Bloomington and
IUPUI and they’re biologists and
geographers and atmospheric scientists
all natural scientists they’re from the
School of Public Health the School of
Public and Environmental Affairs and the
law school so they understand about
social science and they come from the
media school and art architecture and
design because those people I people now
understand about communication and the
importance of understanding
even the University even all broad
expertise even a lot of money can’t
solve a problem if we don’t have
partners outside the university so here
are just a few corporations businesses
nongovernmental organizations a
Children’s Museum here in Bloomington a
land trust that I admire greatly all of
these people have agreed to participate
in coming up with solutions to make
Indiana and all of us in this room as
prepared for environmental change as we
can be
how are we gonna do this it’s called
systems-thinking that’s not all it’ll
take but it does take thinking that
everything is connected to everything
else I was trained as an ecologist you
might be trained as a neuroscientist who
knows about nervous systems or training
to be a doctor who knows about
physiological systems but the point
about systems even delivery systems and
business systems is that everything is
connected to everything else and you
can’t change just one thing and there
are interactions and feedbacks and
nonlinearities and if you’re to avoid
unanticipated undesirable consequences
you need to bring together that
expertise you need partners and you need
to think through what kinds of solutions
can work so we set some specific
achievable goals but natural scientists
among us that will be making accurate
forecasts about the weather and changes
in ranges of say ticks that carry Lyme
disease and we’ll be working on making
our cities greener the urban green
infrastructure that will make our cities
more lievable liveable also agriculture
and the rural world so if we were to
come together as a state we need to have
a rural urban unification to solve
problems so we’ll be doing research
because this is the University and
that’s one of the things we do here and
some of this research will be on earth
systems and we’ve all had our minds
alerted to the severity of the
Hurricanes that hit our coasts and the
severity of those is a reflection of the
change in the atmosphere but the impact
is a reflection of the ways in which
we’ve built our cities and drained those
wetlands and made it so that when the
torrential rains come they flood rather
than run back into the Gulf
we’ll be doing research on movement
ecology so this beautiful piping plover
happens to be carrying a GPS tag and by
monitoring birds and their movements
we’ll know more about the diseases that
they carry they aren’t all bounty but
also how we might run our wind farms so
that they’re less damaging to bird
populations because we’ll know at what
hours they fly and over what locations
they’re most abundant
we will be doing research on agriculture
on style on soil on water on fertilizer
and pesticide use and how to optimize
the use of the land so that there’s room
for the organisms that provide
ecological services like pollination or
seed dispersal and that there’ll be
conservation met methods that make
modifications more appealing the people
who work the land
and then urban green infrastructure so
green roofs are already coming I think
probably New York City is a little bit
ahead of us on this but Indianapolis is
gonna be one of our work sites and other
cities here in Indiana including
Bloomington and where it’s not just
about beautification it’s also about
pulling co2 out of the air it’s about
controlling water flow after storms it’s
about disaster preparedness we can make
our cities more livable
and then communication so I’m a charts
and graphs person but not everybody is
and so you may be a person who’s
persuaded by images or persuaded by
stories or persuaded by the media of
maybe by a TED talk that would be great
but this image is of a bird once again
because I love birds and the bird is its
horned lark and horn larks look like the
birds on your right they have white
bellies and bright yellow throats but
the birds on the left are also horned
larks they happen to be in the museum
these are skins from a museum that were
collected a hundred years ago in Rust
Belt cities so there’s a couple of
messages here I think the particulates
the soot is on the feathers it’s not
like coming out of the bird’s body and
so that was what the atmosphere was like
a hundred years ago and Rust Belt cities
and now the birds have clean breasts so
I think that this gives us hope that if
we demand clean air and clean water we
can visibly see that we can be living in
a healthier world for us and for our
families
so I’m gonna pull a little text out of
my belly here I’d like to read something
this is put together by my friend Beth
gays Lee who’s a member of the team and
the intention is to show you some images
that are about how Indiana can be in the
future if we work together to be
prepared for environmental change so how
can the world be different
please imagine in Indiana farm couple
they’re scanning the horizon from their
ports the city skyline just to the east
has drawn closer than it was 25 years
ago there’s more City and fewer farmers
but it’s engaging horizon thanks to the
new green roofs and linear parks planted
with native grasses and trees to reduce
runoff and keep down the heat looking at
their own fields the couple sees
improvements near at hand
more precise dynamic modeling makes it
easier for them to plan the crop
rotations better habitat for pollinators
makes it easier for them to enhance the
crops productivity and today their
planning involves not just market
economics but also knowledge knowledge
of weather patterns and insects and
diseases last month a couple sent their
firstborn off to college in that city
they see and she was home just last week
with a head full of ideas about carbon
sinks and carbon capture
apparently there’s good money in green
collar jobs or so she tells them
a burst of laughter captures their
attention over the horizon ambles a
youth group they’re headed to the river
here a river abutting the property and
on the way they cross a strip of land
that the couple plans to donate to a
Land Trust
new policies guarantee them a pretty
nice tax break
Villa plan will offer a healthier
migratory pathway for birds and some of
those birds are Raptors who keep mice
out of the fields fewer mice fewer ticks
less Lyme disease the kids at the
river’s edge are extracting equipment
from their packs they’re citizen
scientists they’re here to assess the
species diversity on this strip of land
heard about it from some interns that
came from the sustainability project
here at Indiana and were motivated to
get out and learn about water themselves
so it’s time to leave the couples have
to go to a community community meeting
we would have thought that farmers
residents government managers
environmental advocates and scientists
would be sitting in a planning room
together
but it’s been achieved and it’s been
achieved through a stronger relationship
between science and policy a stronger
relationship between people and the land
and a stronger relationship between
Indiana University and the citizens of
Indiana
so we are about to enter uncharted
waters but we can be prepared and I hope
that you’ll all want to participate and
maybe think a little bit about birds too
so thank you for the honor of talking
with you
[Applause]
there is a rhythm to our natural world
the time
everything in harmony with the orchestra
of life
[Music]
but the beat has changed
familiar patterns are disappearing
ecosystems are altering in the farthest
corners of our planet and right here in
the Hoosier state it means new
challenges affecting every single one of
us no matter our faith our profession or
our politics
[Music]
some of the challenges are obvious
others are more difficult to see but
they’re all changing our very way of
life changing how we eat our
infrastructure our energy use even how
we breathe so we don’t just have to be
prepared to react
we have to be prepared to lead prepared
for environmental change is a new
initiative sponsored by the Grand
Challenges program at Indiana University
it’s a group of hundreds of scientists
professors students environmentalists
ecologists businesspeople public
officials and concerned citizens from
all walks of life throughout Indiana
people working together to meet the
challenges of our changing world
with predictive modeling early warning
systems and collaborative pilot projects
and new ideas to plan and build green
infrastructure conserve biodiversity
clean and protect our waterways and
harness and mighty forces of nature
becoming a model for other communities
facing the same challenges around the
world
because environmental change is one of
the biggest tests of our time it’s one
of our greatest challenges and now right
now it’s time to get to work we can help
when we take the lead for our friends
and neighbors our families for our
cities and towns for all the people
around the world for this singular place
we call home Indiana University’s Grand
Challenges prepared for environmental
change
[Music]
you
good evening as you just learned my name
is Ellen Caterson and I’m a professor in
the biology department here at Indiana
University and I study birds so I study
bird evolution and I study bird ecology
and I study bird behavior
and I’m passionate about birds I really
love them
or their beauty or the marvelous things
they can do
and I’m worried for them and so I’d like
to tell you a little about what they can
do and perhaps recruit you to some of my
worry and some of what I think we can do
about it
a shore bird hatched in the Arctic we’ll
just a few weeks later throw caution to
the winds and fly 2,000 miles non-stop
to a place it’s never been
talk about uncharted waters
here’s the talk like parrots know what
the words mean when they say them so
some parents know as many as a hundred
words and can name 35 objects
some birds can solve problems using
insight they can make tools and use
those tools to make another tool and
then look at an apparatus and figure out
how to get that morsel of food they
really want
and birds are a lot like us they form
pairs and they raise offspring together
and some of them are faithful and some
of them Qi
so some of these worries that are facing
birds or worries that are facing me
because I’m concerned about birds are
climate change habitat loss cats half
cats cats are a problem skyscrapers
things that we build anthropomorphic
creations
so I’ve decided that I would like to
spend my remaining time as an academic
helping to conserve birds
but I’ve known that I can’t do that by
myself because it takes a team if you’re
to have any hope of making a measurable
difference so about the time I made this
decision President Michael McRobbie here
at Indiana University decided to enable
the knowledge resources here at Indiana
University and IUPUI to come together
and have the funds to be able to address
complex significant societal problems
and bring those solutions to the people
of Indiana
and the
first grand challenge as they’re called
was and is designed to cure cancer and
another grand challenge is addressing
the opioid crisis here in Indiana and
the third one is the one I’m here to
represent and so that is being prepared
for environmental change and that
preparation is whether we make it or
whether we don’t so I think it’s
definitely about uncharted waters and
I’m here to ask your help I think we
can’t tune out and I don’t think it’s
too late but we need to start and I
don’t mean next year I mean we need to
start right now
so we know that we’re facing an
unprecedented weather we know we’re
facing
from elongated growing seasons the rate
of a Lyme disease from ticks has
increased 430 percent here in Indiana in
the last five years six billion dollars
in agricultural losses to extreme
weather in the last five years so
there’s a problem but you know it’s hard
for us to get our mind around things
like that and part of that problem I
think is we don’t live that long the
problems unfold over a longer period of
time then our snapshot view of them and
so the urgency can be difficult unless
you believe in charts and graphs so
my husband and I because I have been
around for a while
we’re both bird lovers and this bird the
American Kestrel is one that we used to
play a game we’d be driving from
Bloomington to Indianapolis to the
airport and we’d say how many do we
think we’ll see and we might guess 10 or
12 of these beautiful birds and when I
Drive to the airport now
I don’t see any kestrels and the sky is
really pretty barren of chimney Swifts
and of Nighthawks and of other birds
that used to be abundant but are not so
visible and I know because my baseline
was set when I was 20 years old the age
really of many of you here expect in the
audience but I’ve gotten a chance to
live 50 more years so I can feel the
difference but if you’re just starting
you may not have that visceral sense
that the winners are a lot warmer than
they used to be and the summers are a
lot hotter than they used to be and the
springs come a lot earlier than they
used to but it may be your normal so
envisioning the future is hard for human
beings and one way to attempt to
overcome that limitation is to look back
because if we see how much has changed
say in the last and 200 years then we
might be able to imagine at least the
extent of the change it could take place
in the next 200 years
or the next 50 for most of you will have
retired so it’s I think it’s worth
thinking about
so a hundred years ago they were
celebrating the founding of the state of
Indiana a hundred years before that so
this poster dates from the first
Centennial and what you see is no cars
right
no n-c-double-a no Indy 500 what you see
is kind of stove awakens and a lot has
changed since then in the last 200 years
we in Indiana cleared the forests 70
percent of Indiana’s forests are now
gone we drained the wetlands so 5,300
square miles of wetland were drained we
extirpated the fauna the bison the elk
the Cougars the wolves going out over
time who expects to see a wolf when they
go out right but they used to live here
and the population size changed
dramatically from say a thousand
Europeans to three million actually two
and a half a hundred years ago the 6.6
million now and we faved a great deal of
the land and built cities and we had a
sense of abundance so it isn’t really we
that I’m talking about but it’s the
people who live on this land for the
preceding 200 years they give us a
chance to think how much has changed and
hence the kind of change that we need to
be prepared for and so being prepared
for change is what the grand challenge
that I represent is about and here’s the
team that I joined so you may recognize
President McRobbie and vice president
Rick
and then collaborators that I have the
great pleasure of working with really
smart people who have very diverse kinds
of knowledge and expertise but care
about being prepared for environmental
change
so they come from IU Bloomington and
IUPUI and they’re biologists and
geographers and atmospheric scientists
all natural scientists they’re from the
School of Public Health the School of
Public and Environmental Affairs and the
law school so they understand about
social science and they come from the
media school and art architecture and
design because those people I people now
understand about communication and the
importance of understanding
even the University even all broad
expertise even a lot of money can’t
solve a problem if we don’t have
partners outside the university so here
are just a few corporations businesses
nongovernmental organizations a
Children’s Museum here in Bloomington a
land trust that I admire greatly all of
these people have agreed to participate
in coming up with solutions to make
Indiana and all of us in this room as
prepared for environmental change as we
can be
how are we gonna do this it’s called
systems-thinking that’s not all it’ll
take but it does take thinking that
everything is connected to everything
else I was trained as an ecologist you
might be trained as a neuroscientist who
knows about nervous systems or training
to be a doctor who knows about
physiological systems but the point
about systems even delivery systems and
business systems is that everything is
connected to everything else and you
can’t change just one thing and there
are interactions and feedbacks and
nonlinearities and if you’re to avoid
unanticipated undesirable consequences
you need to bring together that
expertise you need partners and you need
to think through what kinds of solutions
can work so we set some specific
achievable goals but natural scientists
among us that will be making accurate
forecasts about the weather and changes
in ranges of say ticks that carry Lyme
disease and we’ll be working on making
our cities greener the urban green
infrastructure that will make our cities
more lievable liveable also agriculture
and the rural world so if we were to
come together as a state we need to have
a rural urban unification to solve
problems so we’ll be doing research
because this is the University and
that’s one of the things we do here and
some of this research will be on earth
systems and we’ve all had our minds
alerted to the severity of the
Hurricanes that hit our coasts and the
severity of those is a reflection of the
change in the atmosphere but the impact
is a reflection of the ways in which
we’ve built our cities and drained those
wetlands and made it so that when the
torrential rains come they flood rather
than run back into the Gulf
we’ll be doing research on movement
ecology so this beautiful piping plover
happens to be carrying a GPS tag and by
monitoring birds and their movements
we’ll know more about the diseases that
they carry they aren’t all bounty but
also how we might run our wind farms so
that they’re less damaging to bird
populations because we’ll know at what
hours they fly and over what locations
they’re most abundant
we will be doing research on agriculture
on style on soil on water on fertilizer
and pesticide use and how to optimize
the use of the land so that there’s room
for the organisms that provide
ecological services like pollination or
seed dispersal and that there’ll be
conservation met methods that make
modifications more appealing the people
who work the land
and then urban green infrastructure so
green roofs are already coming I think
probably New York City is a little bit
ahead of us on this but Indianapolis is
gonna be one of our work sites and other
cities here in Indiana including
Bloomington and where it’s not just
about beautification it’s also about
pulling co2 out of the air it’s about
controlling water flow after storms it’s
about disaster preparedness we can make
our cities more livable
and then communication so I’m a charts
and graphs person but not everybody is
and so you may be a person who’s
persuaded by images or persuaded by
stories or persuaded by the media of
maybe by a TED talk that would be great
but this image is of a bird once again
because I love birds and the bird is its
horned lark and horn larks look like the
birds on your right they have white
bellies and bright yellow throats but
the birds on the left are also horned
larks they happen to be in the museum
these are skins from a museum that were
collected a hundred years ago in Rust
Belt cities so there’s a couple of
messages here I think the particulates
the soot is on the feathers it’s not
like coming out of the bird’s body and
so that was what the atmosphere was like
a hundred years ago and Rust Belt cities
and now the birds have clean breasts so
I think that this gives us hope that if
we demand clean air and clean water we
can visibly see that we can be living in
a healthier world for us and for our
families
so I’m gonna pull a little text out of
my belly here I’d like to read something
this is put together by my friend Beth
gays Lee who’s a member of the team and
the intention is to show you some images
that are about how Indiana can be in the
future if we work together to be
prepared for environmental change so how
can the world be different
please imagine in Indiana farm couple
they’re scanning the horizon from their
ports the city skyline just to the east
has drawn closer than it was 25 years
ago there’s more City and fewer farmers
but it’s engaging horizon thanks to the
new green roofs and linear parks planted
with native grasses and trees to reduce
runoff and keep down the heat looking at
their own fields the couple sees
improvements near at hand
more precise dynamic modeling makes it
easier for them to plan the crop
rotations better habitat for pollinators
makes it easier for them to enhance the
crops productivity and today their
planning involves not just market
economics but also knowledge knowledge
of weather patterns and insects and
diseases last month a couple sent their
firstborn off to college in that city
they see and she was home just last week
with a head full of ideas about carbon
sinks and carbon capture
apparently there’s good money in green
collar jobs or so she tells them
a burst of laughter captures their
attention over the horizon ambles a
youth group they’re headed to the river
here a river abutting the property and
on the way they cross a strip of land
that the couple plans to donate to a
Land Trust
new policies guarantee them a pretty
nice tax break
Villa plan will offer a healthier
migratory pathway for birds and some of
those birds are Raptors who keep mice
out of the fields fewer mice fewer ticks
less Lyme disease the kids at the
river’s edge are extracting equipment
from their packs they’re citizen
scientists they’re here to assess the
species diversity on this strip of land
heard about it from some interns that
came from the sustainability project
here at Indiana and were motivated to
get out and learn about water themselves
so it’s time to leave the couples have
to go to a community community meeting
we would have thought that farmers
residents government managers
environmental advocates and scientists
would be sitting in a planning room
together
but it’s been achieved and it’s been
achieved through a stronger relationship
between science and policy a stronger
relationship between people and the land
and a stronger relationship between
Indiana University and the citizens of
Indiana
so we are about to enter uncharted
waters but we can be prepared and I hope
that you’ll all want to participate and
maybe think a little bit about birds too
so thank you for the honor of talking
with you
[Applause]
there is a rhythm to our natural world
the time
everything in harmony with the orchestra
of life
[Music]
but the beat has changed
familiar patterns are disappearing
ecosystems are altering in the farthest
corners of our planet and right here in
the Hoosier state it means new
challenges affecting every single one of
us no matter our faith our profession or
our politics
[Music]
some of the challenges are obvious
others are more difficult to see but
they’re all changing our very way of
life changing how we eat our
infrastructure our energy use even how
we breathe so we don’t just have to be
prepared to react
we have to be prepared to lead prepared
for environmental change is a new
initiative sponsored by the Grand
Challenges program at Indiana University
it’s a group of hundreds of scientists
professors students environmentalists
ecologists businesspeople public
officials and concerned citizens from
all walks of life throughout Indiana
people working together to meet the
challenges of our changing world
with predictive modeling early warning
systems and collaborative pilot projects
and new ideas to plan and build green
infrastructure conserve biodiversity
clean and protect our waterways and
harness and mighty forces of nature
becoming a model for other communities
facing the same challenges around the
world
because environmental change is one of
the biggest tests of our time it’s one
of our greatest challenges and now right
now it’s time to get to work we can help
when we take the lead for our friends
and neighbors our families for our
cities and towns for all the people
around the world for this singular place
we call home Indiana University’s Grand
Challenges prepared for environmental
change
[Music]
you
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