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SALISBURY, MD---Dr. Wayne H. Bell, vice president for external relations at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), discusses "The Changing Chesapeake Landscape: Life and Living at the Edge of the Sea" on Thursday, April 29, at 7 p.m. at Salisbury State University’s Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture. His presentation is free and the public is invited.

Bell’s illustrated talk will show how life in Chesapeake Bay is influenced more by what happens on its 64,000 square mile watershed than by its neighboring coastal ocean. Since the beginning of recorded history in this region, human activity has altered that watershed and therefore influenced the ecology of the Bay itself.

In reviewing changes in plant cover and bird life from past to present, the Chesapeake could be viewed as a complete coastal ecosystem in which land, water and all its living residents--including humans--have always been interdependent. This look at the past will provide a new perspective on today’s efforts to "restore" Chesapeake Bay.

UMCES operates the Horn Point Laboratory (Cambridge), Chesapeake Biological Laboratory (Solomons Island) and Appalachian Laboratory (Frostburg). A native of Silver Spring, MD, Bell did his undergraduate work at the University of Miami, Florida, and received his Ph.D. in marine microbiology from Harvard University. He has done research at Woods Hole, the University of Trondheim, Norway, and the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and taught at Middlebury College and Hamilton College. Bell joined the UMCES administration in 1985.

He is on the boards of directors of the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, Monitory International and the International Center for Environmental Management of Enclosed Coastal Seas based in Kobe, Japan, a program he helped establish.

The Nabb Center, a repository for the Peninsula’s past, was established to provide a "laboratory" for history students and serves the Delmarva community at large, as well as family and local history researchers from across the nation.

For more information about Bell’s lecture contact the Nabb Center at 410-543-6312. The Nabb Center is located in the Power Professional Building on the corner of Wayne and Power Streets in Salisbury.