The Dean of the Faculty of Science, Professor Anton le Roex, has pleasure in inviting you to a lecture by UCT Alumnus Professor Guy Midgley.  Professor Midgley is currently a professor at Stellenbosch University where he focuses on climate change and biodiversity research and teaching.  He was previously Chief Specialist Scientist and Chief Director at the South African National Botanical Institute (SANBI) where he led SANBI’s Global Change and Biodiversity programs. He has conducted field, lab and other collaborative work in Chile, Australia, USA, Germany, France, Botswana and Namibia, collaborating with many leading ecological scientists internationally on environmental global change research.

Title of the Lecture:  “Back to the future for African ecosystems:  How rising CO2 is changing everything.”

The global distribution of the world’s ecosystems, and particularly their vegetation, has long been thought to be primarily controlled by climate. However, it is increasingly clear that the level of atmospheric CO2 plays an extremely important role.  The next century of CO2 increase represents an evolutionary shock to “modern” ecosystems that have evolved under the exceptionally low CO2 levels of the past several million years. Rising CO2 is busy changing almost everything about the way ecosystems function, especially in Africa, and this talk will examine what we currently know about what is changing, what the implications are, and what some solutions are.