Long Term Climate Variability and It's Consequences for Maine Ecosystems - Past and Future

GEORGE L. JACOBSON is Professor Emeritus of Biology, Ecology, and Climate Change at the University of Maine.  Since his arrival in Maine in 1979, Dr. Jacobson has been a member of the Climate Change Institute, and he was Director of the Institute for nearly a decade.  He currently has the honor of serving as the Maine State Climatologist.

His research has focused on long-term climate variability and specifically on forest responses to climate changes during the past 60,000 years.  His projects have included sites in North America, South America, and Europe.   During the 1990s he chaired the Scientific Advisory Panel for the NOAA Paleoclimate Program, and for the past five years he has chaired a similar Scientific Advisory Panel for the European Science Foundation, the scientific arm of the European Union.  In addition, he recently served as an advisor to the Finnish Academy of Sciences in their development of a paleoclimate research program.

Consistent with his lifetime of involvement with conservation biology, Dr. Jacobson currently serves as a Trustee of the Maine Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, and also as a member of the Board of Directors of the Forest Society of Maine.  Professor Jacobson joined the faculty of the University of Maine in 1979 after three years working in the United States Senate in Washington, D.C., first as a Congressional Science Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and then as a staff scientist for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.  He was born in Rapid City, South Dakota, and earned a B.A. in 1968 from Carleton College, and a Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of Minnesota.