A regional climate conference is returning this week to Portland.
The 10th annual Northwest Climate Conference will be held at a downtown Portland hotel from Tuesday through Thursday.
The event will start Tuesday evening with an open session that will talk about agriculture and climate change in the Pacific Northwest.
Portland State University is hosting the event. Assistant professor and conference chair Paul Loikith said the summit has become more diverse over the years.
“I think each year the conference has sort of expanded the scope and the diversity of voices that participate and there’s reflection of that in the panels,” Loikith said.
A wide range of experts spanning from Alaska to Montana to Southern California will be sharing their latest research on climate change this time around.
The first conference was held June 2010 at Portland State University, which co-hosted with Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. Since then, the event hosts have rotated between institutions in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The most recent event in Portland was in 2013.
“So it’s a really, really dynamic environment where people that typically don’t end up in the same conference space are there interacting and learning from each other and teaching different things to each other,” Loikith said.
The summit will cover a wide range of topics including water quality impacts, drought, wildfires, and public perception of climate change.