Suzanne Simard on May 1, 2024 | UCSB Arts & Lectures

“What Simard is revealing here has implications and potential on the scale of mapping the human genome. Simard is one of this planet’s most insightful and eloquent translators.” – John Vaillant, bestselling author of The Golden Spruce

As the world’s foremost forest ecologist, Suzanne Simard has reshaped the way we understand the life and growth of plants. In her groundbreaking work Finding the Mother Tree, Simard explained how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks. Her research established the existence of “mother trees” that play an important role in the flow of information and resources in a forest. The concepts she developed have influenced everyone from earth scientists to artists – think James Cameron’s Avatar and Richard Powers’ The Overstory. Join Simard for a dazzling journey through the unseen world going on above our heads and under our feet.