Photo: Britten Leigh Photography

My name is Katie Glover, and I’m interested in the impacts of climate change on our planet and society. I am a National Geographic Explorer and my current affiliation is with the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. I research the impact of glacial cycles on past landscapes in North America, work that stems from a love of hiking and backpacking since childhood.

In my research, I seek to understand how climate change, vegetation turnover, and disturbance have caused tipping points that shifted landscapes into different stable states. I have used the physical and biological deposits in lake cores and botanical material in museum collections to develop these long-term histories. North American regions where I have worked include the mountains of Southern California, the Upper Midwest, Ontario, and Alberta. Details and publications on these projects are available on my Research page. Knowing what has driven ecosystem change in the past can help us understand future scenarios of change on a warming planet.

I have designed and taught natural science courses for high school, undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. As an educator, I seek to empower students to apply knowledge of the physical world around them to their work and lived experience. I currently oversee the design and implementation of new professional training in climate change for CCI, with recent pilot programming that focused on K-12 teachers.

Contact:
email | @gloverkatherine

Baldwin Lake, August 2012