Climate Crisis and Archeology:
Mike Newland is Director of the Northern California Cultural Resources Group for Environmental Science Associates, one of the nation’s oldest and most successful professional environmental firms. He has been a professional archaeologist for over 20 years and has worked throughout California and the Great Basin. For the past five years his research efforts have focused on the effects of modern climate change on cultural resources. He conducted the pilot research project for the National Park Service on the impacts of climate change on the cultural heritage of Point Reyes National Seashore and has recently completed a collaborative Traditional Ecological Knowledge study with the National Park Service, Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation, and Elk Valley Rancheria in Redwoods National Park.
Mr. Newland is a member of the Society for American Archaeology’s Climate Change Task Force and is a Past-President for the Society for California Archaeology. He leads the Society’s efforts in addressing the impacts of pending climate change on the state’s cultural resources as the co-chair of the California Archaeology and Climate Change Committee. He is the lead author in a chapter on climate change and California archaeology in the pending book Public Archaeology and Climate Change, published by Oxford Press (press pending). In addition, Mr. Newland is a regular commentator on the topic of archaeology and its intersection with everyday life for the KQED Perspectives series; his audio essays can be found archived online at www.kqed.org/radio/programs/perspectives.