Public Events --

Brownbag Lectures: Great Plains

Brownbag Lectures: Great Plains

• Location: ISM Research & Collections Center, Springfield
• Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Dr. Tim Cashatt will provide a BBC Video from the Planet Earth series

From the creators of Blue Planet: Seas of Life comes this epic series celebrating the Earth as never before. With an unprecedented production budget, using high definition photography and revolutionary ultra-high speed cameras, five years in the making, over 2000 days in the field, using 40 cameramen across 200 locations, Planet Earth is the ultimate portrait of our planet.

This episode deals with savanna, steppe, tundra, prairie, and looks at the importance and resilience of grasses in such treeless ecosystems. Their vast expanses contain the largest concentration of animal life. In Outer Mongolia, a herd of Mongolian gazelle flee a bush fire and has to move on to new grazing. On the Arctic tundra during spring, millions of migratory snow geese arrive to breed and their young are preyed on by Arctic foxes. Meanwhile, time-lapse photography depicts moving herds of caribou as a calf is brought down by a chasing wolf. On the North American prairie, bison engage in the ritual to establish the dominant males. The Tibetan Plateau is the highest of the plains and despite its relative lack of grass, animals do survive there, including yak and wild ass. However, the area’s most numerous resident is the pika, whose nemesis is the Tibetan fox. In tropical India, the tall grasses hide some of the largest creatures and also the smallest, such as the pygmy hog. The final sequence depicts the African savannah and the elephants that are forced to share a waterhole with a pride of thirty lions.

(Video is 58 minutes long) 

One of our Brownbag Lectures

Weekly lectures held at the Museum's Research and Collections Center. Lectures are usually held during lunchtime on Wednesday. The RCC is located at 1011 E. Ash Street in Springfield. Access to the building is from 10 ½ Street (between Ash and Laurel Streets), where there is ample visitor parking in the west parking lot. For more information, please call 217-785-0037. Brown Bag Lectures are free and open to the public.

Also, if you want to be informed of upcoming lectures by email, you can sign up for the brownbag announcement list.