Mark Williams, University of Colorado Boulder professor of geography, will address a range of snow and water security concerns at 5:15 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 3 at Noble Hall, room 130, at Fort Lewis College.
The program, “Save Our Snow: Climate Change, Fracing, Ski Areas, and Water Security in Colorado and the West,” is free an open to the public.
Water security is critical to the economy of Colorado and other western states. Snowmelt runoff from high-elevation mountains provides most of the usable water in Colorado.
“I'll explain why mountains are ‘water towers.’ We'll discuss how our water security is threatened by a variety of factors, including climate change, the mountain pine beetle epidemic, and fracing for natural gas as a single well uses 1 million to 5 million gallons of water,” Williams said.
“I will walk the audience through strategies to predict future climates in the Colorado Rockies and how changes in climate may change our snow resource. We will evaluate whether we'll have snow to ski on in the future and how these changes may affect water availability, water quality, and ecosystem processes.”
Williams is a fellow at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), lead scientist on the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research program, and director of a developing fracing research center at CU-Boulder.
The presentation is part of “CU in the Community,” a series of lectures by CU-Boulder faculty. This community program is jointly sponsored by the Mountain Studies Institute, Fort Lewis College, and LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu, an online tool developed by the CU-Boulder Office for University Outreach.
LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu is a public resource that localizes climate change for Coloradans and offers current research, educational videos, tools for educators, and more. For more information about the series, email outreach@colorado.edu.
-CU-Boulder Office for University Outreach-