The seventh John Pesek Colloquium on Sustainable Agriculture, which honors a retired Iowa State University agronomy professor, will explore the potential for the agricultural sector to respond to climate change.

Cynthia Rosenzweig, who has been studying climate change and agriculture for 20 years, will be the featured speaker at two events. The first will be 7 p.m. Feb. 28 in the Sun Room of the Iowa State Memorial Union. Her presentation is titled, "Climate Change and Agriculture: Learning Lessons/Proposing Solutions." There will be a reception at 6 p.m. in the same location.

The same lecture will be delivered March 1 at Dordt College in Sioux Center. It will begin at 1:30 p.m. in Room SB101 of the Science Building with a reception to follow.

The lectures will be followed by comments from invited guests and questions and discussion from the audience. Both events are free and open to the public.

Rosenzweig holds a doctorate in plant, soil and environmental sciences from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is a research agronomist at NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which is affiliated with Columbia University.

During her lectures, Rosenzweig will present "lessons learned" from 20 years of climate change research done to date, including biophysical impacts and socioeconomic implications of a changing climate for the United States and abroad. She also will examine possible responses to global warming by mitigating atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and adapting to warming temperatures and more droughts and floods.

The colloquium honors John Pesek, who served terms as president of both the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America. His research led to a better understanding of the effects of farming practices on the environment.

In the late 1980s, Pesek chaired a National Research Council committee that produced "Alternative Agriculture," a groundbreaking report that documented how farming systems that use less pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics and fuel can be productive and profitable.

The Henry A. Wallace Endowed Chair for Sustainable Agriculture is the primary sponsor of the Pesek Colloquium. The colloquium is cosponsored this year by the Department of Agronomy, along with several other ISU programs including the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, College of Agriculture, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, F. Wendell Miller Lecture Fund, Bioethics Program and Global Agriculture Programs. Co-sponsors include Iowa Farmers Union and Dordt College.