Island Lecture Series | The Biogeography of North Atlantic Islands, with David Cairns
Presented by the Institute of Island Studies at UPEI, the Island Lecture Series will island-hop across the northern North Atlantic to see who lives there and how they got there. Biogeography is the three-way crossroads of history, biology, and geography. For most of these islands; the Shetlands, the Faeroes, Iceland, and many others; this history started when bare land emerged from under melting ice about 10,000 years ago, with creatures soon arriving by wing or wind. Humans came too, some by primitive boats that we know almost nothing about. But history can also have recent beginnings, such as the explosive birth of Surtsey Island, off Iceland, in 1963. Speaker David Cairns recounts the rich biological traditions of island biogeography, and shows that their insights apply equally well to people.