UA News

The 9th SAHRA Annual Meeting will address risks to water supplies associated with climate change.

Climate change and the impact that change will have on vegetation, land cover and management of water resources will be discussed during the Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas group's annual meeting. 

The University of Arizona group, also known as SAHRA, will hold the meeting Sept. 23 and 24 at the Doubletree Hotel, located at 445 S. Alvernon Way in Tucson.

Biosphere 2, the Institute of the Environment and the Water Sustainability Program at the UA have collaborated on the program.

The meeting was organized primarily for water researchers and policy makers. Much of the discussion will expand on a plenary session with Dennis Lettenmaier of the University of Washington and Julio Betancourt, a paleoecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and an associate in the UA geosciences department.

Lettenmaier and Betancourt wrote a seminal article in Science in 2008 attacking "stationarity," the concept that natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging "envelope of variability." Water management systems throughout the developed world have been designed and operated under the assumption that variability in natural systems have upper and lower limits.

The co-author argue that human activity and climate change have altered the picture and that new climate models are needed to address how water supplies are managed.

The meeting will include 14 sessions addressing climate change on topics ranging from ecosystem management and agriculture to energy production and the role of citizen scientists.