The Vega Symposium | SSAG | Svenska Sällskapet för Antropologi och Geografi

The Vega Day 2023

Date: Friday April 21, 2023, 14.00–17.45.

Venue: Beijersalen, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, KVA, Lilla Frescativägen 4 A, Stockholm (metro: Universitetet; bus stop: Universitetet norra)

The Power of the Past: Tracking Lake Ecosystem Changes in an Anthropocene World

The 2023 Vega Symposium honours John P. Smol, Distinguished University Professor at Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada), who has been awarded SSAG’s Vega Medal 2023 for his scientific contributions to Physical Geography. He is recognized as one of the foremost experts on the study of long-term global environmental changes to lakes and rivers. John Smol is unquestionably one of the most prolific scientists in paleolimnology, and certainly the most prolific regarding northern lake systems. The theme of the symposium will focus on “The Power of the Past: Tracking Lake Ecosystem Changes in an Anthropocene World”. One of the greatest challenges faced by ecologists, regulators, and other environmental scientists is using appropriate time scales to assess environmental change. Due to the lack of systematic long-term monitoring data, it is often difficult to determine the nature, timing, and causes of ecosystem changes. Nonetheless, the ecosystems around us have been (indirectly) archiving records of past environmental change in a wide spectrum of sources, including lake and river sediments (i.e. the field of paleolimnology). The Symposium will focus on the importance of using paleolimnological approaches to assess long-term environmental changes in lakes, and how this information can provide critical data required for evidence-based policy to address future environmental challenges.

Programme

14.00 Opening of the Vega Symposium.
Associate Professor Madeleine Bonow, President SSAG and Chair of the symposium.

14.10 Introduction Associate professor Lina Polvi Sjöberg, Umeå University.

14.20 Lakes in the Anthropocene: Using the past to better prepare for the future. Professor John P. Smol, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

15.00 The power of palaeoecology for understanding and managing shallow lakes. Professor Helen Bennion, University College London.

15.30 Coffee

16.00 The first arrival of people and the changing environment in northernmost Greenland.
Professor Raymond Bradley, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.

16.30 Medieval globalization and the transformation of the Swedish landscape. Professor Richard Bindler, Umeå University.

17.00 Discussion

17.30 Closing of the Symposium

Invitation 2023 (pdf)
Queen’s professor turns 40 years of playing with mud into prestigious Vega Medal; at CBC News