PORT ANGELES — “Windshield Wilderness” will be the topic of the first lecture, scheduled Tuesday, in the Olympic National Park Perspectives Winter Speaker Series.
David Louter of the Pacific West Region National Park Service will explore the relationship between automobiles and national parks and how together, they have shaped ideas of wilderness.
Talks take place at 7 p.m. the second Tuesday of each month, December through April, and are free of charge.
With the exception of Jan. 12, all programs will be offered at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center, 3002 Mount Angeles Road.
The Jan. 12 venue will be announced.
The series is sponsored by Olympic National Park and the Friends of Olympic National Park.
Here is the schedule for other lectures in the series:
■ Jan. 12, Olympic National Park Inspiration: Filmmaker Eliza Goode’s film, “Smell of Cedars Steeped in Rain,” is a wordless love letter to the park and the region and to finding renewal in nature.
Music is by Wild Rabbit.
The film will be followed by a question-and-answer session and more music.
Goode is a graduate of Montana State University.
■ Feb. 9, The Olympic Mountains Experiment: OLYMPEX: Angela Rowe of UW will present a program about measuring rain across the Olympic Peninsula.
She will speak about the high-tech and multi-pronged effort by NASA, the UW Atmospheric Science Program and others that is intended to help improve a new NASA weather satellite.
■ March 8, Interpreting Olympic National Park in Words and Photographs: Tim McNulty, poet and author, and Pat O’Hara, photographer, will present the program.
■ April 14, Science, Technology and Salmon in Olympic National Park: Sam Brenkman, a fisheries biologist at Olympic National Park, will explore technologies used to reveal the distribution, abundance and migrations of salmonids.
He will present information on findings from headwaters-to-sea snorkel surveys and thermal imaging in major Olympic Peninsula rivers.
For more information, see www.nps.gov/olym.