Date: August 6, 2024

Time: 6:00 p.m.

Location: Landrum Library

Speakers: Dr. Greg Lewis, professor of biology at Furman University

The Piedmont and Blue Ridge provinces of South Carolina are experiencing some of the fastest urban growth in the country.  Therefore, it’s important to understand how the transformation of rural lands to urban and suburban lands affects water quality and other conditions in streams and rivers, which are often used as public water supplies, receivers of treated wastewater, and for recreational opportunities. This presentation will provide a summary of over 20 years of research by faculty and students at Furman University on how both natural variations in the landscape and human activity influence water quality in streams and rivers in this region.

Greg is a Professor and the Chair of the Biology Department at Furman University.  He has been on the faculty at the University since 2000.  Since childhood, he has been fascinated by freshwater ecosystems and has spent most of his professional career studying them.  As a PhD student at Cornell University, he studied small streams in the Allegheny National Forest of northwestern Pennsylvania.  As a postdoctoral research fellow at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory near Aiken, South Carolina, he studied small artificial lakes. For the past 23 years at Furman, he has collaborated with other Biology faculty and faculty in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Sustainability Sciences on interdisciplinary studies of streams, rivers, ponds, and wetlands across the South Carolina Piedmont and Blue Ridge Escarpment.  His research has focused on how a variety of human activities (including release of wastewater treatment effluent, urbanization, and agriculture) influence water quality in streams and rivers.

The Landrum Library Speaker Series programs are made possible thanks to our partnership with the Spartanburg County Public Libraries.

Contact Pam Torlina, [email protected], with questions or for more information.