Several areas of the University have joined together to begin a new lecture series, focusing on nature and the environment, that will bring outstanding scholars and researchers to the Storrs campus.

The Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series will be held once a month at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, beginning September 24 with Robert Costanza. The lectures start at 7:30 p.m.

Costanza, president of the International Society for Ecological Economics and director of an institute at the University of Maryland, was lead author of a paper in the journal Nature that estimates the value of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital at roughly $33 trillion per year - nearly twice the global gross national product total of about $18 trillion per year.

The lecture series will end on April 28 with the Geib Distinguished Environmental Lecture, given by Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University's Department of Biological Sciences. Ehrlich, a MacArthur Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is internationally known for his work creating public awareness of over-population and is the author of The Population Bomb.

The lecture series is named for Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980), one of the best-loved naturalists of his generation. The writer and photographer of American nature won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for "Wandering Through Winter," written after he and his family moved from Long Island to a 130-acre wooded estate in Hampton, Conn. Shortly before his death, he donated his literary manuscripts to the UConn Libraries. His widow donated additional papers and a large part of their personal library. The collection, housed at the Dodd Center, includes his photographs. The co-sponsors of the lecture series are the Dodd Center, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School, the environmental engineering program, the Center for Conservation and Biodiversity, the Museum of Natural History and the departments of ecology & evolutionary biology, economics, English, philosophy and political science.

Renu Sehgal-Aldrich