Climate Change and Sustainable Water

Through this course, students will learn about what makes the water cycle a cycle: how water is circulated through its components, and what drives these circulations. We will explore the roles of humans as an integral part of the water cycle: how we use our water resources and how our actions help shape the water cycle. In every lesson, students will be encouraged to think about how climate change will affect both us and the other components. Ultimately, students will gain insights on the world’s water resources and how to manage them in a sustainable way.

A novel aspect of this course is the introduction of paleoclimate (particularly, information from tree rings) into the study of water resources. We will learn from the painful lesson of the Colorado River Basin, where water management decisions based on a short instrumental record, which happened to be taken over an abnormally wet period, led to water over-allocation and the severe water stresses today. We will also cover other case studies from all over the world. With help from tree rings, we will gain a much better understanding of long-term changes in the water cycle, and manage our water resources better.