"Sea Change" Journalist Visits Penn State, Participates in Shaping The Future Summit

On Monday, March 17, Pulitzer Center journalist grantee Craig Welch joins Penn State's Shaping the Future Summit, a yearlong campus conversation on issues and challenges in the coming years. Welch, an environmental reporter for The Seattle Times, discusses his Pulitzer Center-supported reporting project on ocean acidification and explores the issues the world is facing with our changing seas.

With excessive CO2 emissions from many regions around the world, ocean chemistry has been changing at an unprecedented rate. Ocean acidification is one of the biggest environmental threats facing the planet.

Panelists for the March 17 discussion include:

Craig Welch, environmental journalist for The Seattle Times/Pulitzer Center
Iliana Baums, associate professor of psychology
Elizabeth Boyer, associate professor of water resources
Timothy Bralower, professor of geosciences
Wren Patton, graduate student, ecology

Welch's reporting, undertaken along with Seattle Times photographer Steve Ringman, is a major news organization's first deep and thorough analysis of the consequences of this sea change. Welch and Ringman reported on the marine biodiversity across Arctic Alaska, to the American Northwest, to the Coral Triangle in the South Pacific, a place where millions of people rely for subsistence on marine life threatened by acidification. By using multimedia platforms for their reporting, Welch and Ringman brought the issue of changing sea acidity to life.

The Pulitzer Center provided financial support to Welch and Ringman to undertake their "Sea Change" reporting project.

Monday, March 17
7-8 pm
Shaping the Future Summit
Penn State University
HUB Auditorium
University Park
State College, PA

Welch's participation in the Summit is part of a two-day visit to the University supported by the Pulitzer Center and Penn State's Shaping the Future Summit/Schreyer Honors College, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Department of Geosciences, and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute.