LEWISTON — The February Great Falls Forum on Friday, Feb. 21, will feature Mike Retelle, Bates College geology professor, speaking about monitoring glaciers.

The lecture will take place from noon to 1 p.m. in Callahan Hall at the Lewiston Public Library. It is titled “Monitoring Glaciers in a Changing Arctic Climate: Perspectives Gained from Long Term Environmental Monitoring.”

Retelle has spent most of his academic and research career studying high latitude areas of the North Atlantic region. He began his arctic research in Canada focusing on glacial and sea level history and high resolution records of climate change preserved in annually layered lake sediments.

In 2005, Retelle began working in western Spitsbergen in the Norwegian arctic that included investigation of longer-term and high-resolution climate change from lake sediment cores.

He is working in Scotland with other Bates faculty on a history and archaeology study, the Shetland Islands Climate and Settlement Project. His role is recovering and analyzing lacustrine sediment cores that preserve records of environmental change during the period of occupation of the archaeology sites.

In his presentation, Retelle will talk about how he got into glacier research and discuss the realities of working above the Arctic Circle. He also will review the results of his work to date and talk about the future of Arctic and North Atlantic climate change studies.

Admission is free to all Great Falls Forum events and no reservations are required. This program is a bring-your-own brown-bag lunch event. Coffee, tea and bottled water will be available at the library.

The Great Falls Forum is co-sponsored by Bates College, Lewiston Public Library and the Sun Journal.

The library is at 200 Lisbon St. at the corner of Pine Street.

More information on Thursday’s lecture or other upcoming events in the Great Falls Forum series is available by contacting the library at 513-3135 or www.LPLonline.org.

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