EASC 405: Water Cycles and Resources: Environmental and Climate Change Impacts
| Credits: | 3 |
Pre-requisites: | EASC 304 & 412; GEOG 311 |
Lecture (hrs/week): | 2 |
| Terms: | Spring |
Recommended: | GEOG 411 |
Seminar (hrs/week): | 1 |
| Instructors: | Allen | ||||
| Course Notes: | |||||
Description:
Changes to the water cycle resulting from changes in climate directly impact people and ecosystems. Our understanding of hydrologic system response to climate fluctuations continues to rapidly evolve, building on a substantial and productive research history (e.g., changing snowpack and streamflow timing). Fundamentally, questions remain about changes to water budget components, including precipitation, evapotranspiration, streamflow, and groundwater recharge due to uncertainties in the physical processes themselves and the climate change predictions. Similarly, the suitability of historical records for forecasting is sometimes compromised by persistent natural variations and human driven changes (e.g., urbanization). Managing water resources requires the ability to provide reliable predictions of the response of the water cycle to changing environmental conditions at a range of scales. How will the hydrologic system and associated subsystems respond to, and evolve under, natural and human induced changes in climate and the environment?
This course will first review climate variability and climate change, looking at past evidence, and then discussing new approaches for making predictions about the future. We will focus in depth on the various impacts to water cycles over a range of scales, considering both climate and other environmental stressors through case study analysis. The secondary impacts of climate change on water resources (including water for humans and aquatic ecosystems) will be explored by focusing on current issues to generate ideas for potential mitigative and adaptive solutions.