April 25 EarthTalks Speaker Matthew Larsen, U.S. Geological Survey
April 2011
Speaker to address managing predicted water-resources stresses and water-related hazards
Matthew Larsen, U.S. Geological Survey, will discuss the critical challenges facing national governments attempting to mitigate current and predicted water-resources challenges and water-related hazards as part of the spring EarthTalks series, "Where Climate Science Meets the Road: Managing Resources for Climate Change."
His talk, "Global Change and Water Resources Management Challenges in the Next 100 Years," is scheduled for 4 p.m., Monday, April 25, in 112 Walker.
"The U.S. and other regions of the world are engaged in national-scale, multi-year population, land use and economic experiments which pose major water-resources challenges and potential conflicts for the 21st century," said Larsen, associate director with Climate and Land Use Change (USGS).
"Those include expansion of and shift to irrigated agriculture, degradation of riparian and estuarine ecosystems, and population increases in water-scarce regions. In addition, climate change models predict precipitation and streamflow patterns will change in coming decades," Larsen said.
"The challenges that we face this century include a combination of local and national management problems that are already upon us, as well as emerging and future problems that are closely associated with rising temperature and changes in the distribution of precipitation," Larsen said.
Before being named associate director for Climate and Land Use Change in 2010, Larsen served as USGS's associate director for water. He also has served as the chief scientist for hydrology and led the USGS National Research Program in hydrology.
The 2011 spring EarthTalks seminar series, "Where Climate Science Meets the Road: Managing Resources for Climate Change," is sponsored by the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI). For the full list of speakers, visit Spring 2011 EarthTalks Series: "Managing Resources for Climate Change".
