"Whisky's for drinking. Water's for fighting over" - Mark Twain
Wednesday, November 9, 2005
4:00 - 5:00 pm
LFG 102, UNLV Campus
Abstract
Mark Twain's quote is the theme of a talk that explores issues contributing to conflicts in water resources in North America and around. Problems of drought, population growth, profits, and politics are now coming together in a way that makes this precious commodity worth fighting over. Unfortunately, the freshwater water resources of planet are finite - there are no new sources of freshwater on the planet. Rapidly increasing populations pressure what freshwater resources there are through pollution of surface water, mining of ground water faster than it can be replenished, and disruption of ecosystem function. In many countries, feeding these expanding populations requires that a significant fraction of freshwater be used in irrigated agriculture.
Canada, which seemingly has an abundance of freshwater, is not without problems. In the west, regional droughts have increasingly significant local impacts. Prospects exist with global climate change for prairie-wide disruption of streamflows from the Rocky Mountains. Canada's longer-term problem is as a neighbor to a country where the water supplies are not meeting water needs in some places. The most important crisis now is in the drought-prone southwestern United States where the Colorado River supply is now fully allocated. However, water supply crises are simmering in the Pacific Northwest, and southeastern states.
Outside of North America, the problems are magnified. In south-central Asia, major diversions of water for agriculture have destroyed the Aral Sea. New dam construction in Turkey along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers as a prelude to increased agriculture threatens conflicts with downstream users like Syria, and Iraq. The challenges for hydrologists in dealing with these water issues are increasing around the world.
Updated September 15, 2005