Topic:Water Resources in the 21th Century – a Global Perspective
Speaker: Chi-yuen Wang, Department of Earth and Planetary Earth,University of California, Berkeley
Time: 24, Nov., 2009  9:00AM
Venue: Room 1401, IGSNRR
Introduction:
Water resource has been an important issue worldwide, but more so in the 21th century in view of the increasing demand and climate change. In order to provide a global perspective to this problem Prof. Wang will compare the various attempts in different countries to find solutions to this problem. He will then focus on some aspects of water resource in China’s northwest. Despite of its extreme aridity, China’s northwest are currently seeing an increased water supply. For example, some cities in the Hexi Corridor have recently been repeatedly flooded by rising groundwater, forcing more than 1000 families to abandon homes. New lakes are also appearing in the Taklamakan Desert. They investigate the cause of the rising groundwater by using new isotopic and chemical data for waters collected from the Hexi corridor, the Taklamakan Desert, and the mountains around these regions. The results show that the rising groundwater may have originated from the surrounding mountains at elevations several thousand of meters above sealevel. Accelerated glacier melting may have increased recharge of groundwater in the mountains that was subsequently released by recent earthquakes from the mountains to the valley to raise the local water table. Finally, he will discuss the potential impact of climate change on water resources in China’s northwest and present some suggestions on possible solution of the regional water resources.