AUGUSTA – Paul Mayewski has visited remote reaches of the planet, leading expeditions to collect snow samples and ice cores in an effort to reconstruct the planet’s climate history.

The research, which has taken Mayewski to the Andes Mountains, Antarctica, the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau and elsewhere, is geared at understanding modern-day climate change.

Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine in Orono, will deliver the keynote address Sunday at the University of Maine at Augusta’s convocation.

Mayewski’s address is the first in a succession of UMA events that tie into the college’s chosen theme for the academic year: environmental sustainability.

His speech Sunday will follow Allyson Hughes Handley’s formal installation as UMA’s president.

A dozen representatives from the city of Augusta, the UMA faculty, student government, state government and elsewhere will participate in installing Handley, who became campus president in March.

The United States is in the throes of economic crisis as it prepares to elect a new president. Climate change is not at the top of every voter’s mind, Mayewski said.

But the effects of climate change are broader than they might appear, he said.

“Climate determines where we get our food from, where we get our water from,” Mayewski said. “All these things impact security, economic well-being and growth, and health.”

As the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates tussle about national security concerns, Mayewski said climate change should figure more prominently into the discussion.

“People tend to become more likely to have wars the more they are stressed,” he said. “Climate change is potentially one of the bigger stresses on the planet.”

Mayewski said he hopes listeners on Sunday leave the event with an understanding of climate change’s gravity.

“Ideally, people will walk away with a set of information that will unequivocally demonstrate to them that humans have had a very strong impact on the climate system,” Mayewski said.

Listeners should also leave, he said, with a tinge of optimism over what they can accomplish by addressing climate change.

“If we realize this as an issue, it opens up great opportunities for us,” Mayewski said. “While the future may be warmer and stormier, it could be an environment which is, economically and healthwise, far better than what we have today.”