Christopher L Castro, UA Associate Professor of Hydrology & Atmospheric Sciences
Tuesday, Sept 13,2022
2:30-3:30 pm,
the Great Room of the Arizona Senior Academy
Note special day and time!
For six million years the once mighty Colorado River has flowed from its source high in the Rocky Mountains nearly 1500 miles south through magnificent scenery and into the Gulf of California.
Mighty no more, the river that carved out the Grand Canyon is now in the top slot on the American Rivers’ “Most Endangered Rivers” report due to a century of diversion, overuse, overallocation and wasteful management. Add climate change to the mix and it will likely decrease the river’s flow by another 5 to 20 percent in the near future. Less precipitation, drought and higher overall air temperatures will mean more water lost to evaporation and consequently produce even lower flows.
The Colorado River is a perfect symbol of what happens when a limited resource is over tapped. Most years it fails to have enough water to empty into the Gulf, disappearing around 50 miles before its former outlet to the sea.
Christopher Castro, who spoke to ASA earlier this year about the effect of rising heat on the ferocity of monsoons, is focused on this problem. His research group at UA studies climate change and how it will affect water resources in the southwest. Castro’s team is concerned not only with groundwater but with aquifers that feed surface water supplies. Their research in the March issue of American Hydrology discusses this problem. They looked at the Colorado River basin as a single region encompassing eight states and two nations that uses trillions of gallons per year.
Their study is the first to integrate knowledge about groundwater with scientific models about climate change.
Castro will be discussing these ideas and what choices the future holds for us. He cautions, “We must choose wisely or we could end up with a barely habitable wasteland.”
Preview by Roxy Mitchem-Horn, Academy Village Volunteer