Climate Science Connections: Water in the West

How will climate change affect the availability of water in the Western United States—where water is already the most precious natural resource? What water management challenges does the Western U.S. face? How do we manage natural disasters like drought, wildfire, and flooding? This course engages participants with cutting-edge science in exploring these and other questions about the intersection of climate change and water management in the West.

This free online course:

• Provides an introduction to the topic of water in the West
• Highlights challenges of water management using the Colorado River Basin as the premier example
• Reviews and evaluates flooding, drought, wildfires, and interactions between these natural disasters using the Boulder Creek Watershed as an example
• Provides an educational context for these broad topics and introduces educators to resources and teaching approaches for their classrooms

The course is built around panel discussions with hydrologists, policy makers, engineers, and science educators. In the course we explore challenges for water management in the Western US both at a large scale – using the Colorado River Basin Watershed as an example – and at small scale – using the Boulder Creek watershed as an example where flooding occurred on the heals of drought and wildfire damage.

Join us for this interactive and self-paced online course (a mini version of a Massive Open Online Course – MOOC).  The course will run over 4 weeks requiring a total of 8-10 hours to complete.

Scientists who present during the course are

·      Jeff Lukas, research scientist with Western Water Assessment

·      Dr. Dough Kenney, policy and law researcher at University of Colorado Law School

·      Sheila Murphy, hydrologist, US Geological Survey

·      Dr. Brian Ebel, hydrologist, Colorado School of Mines

·      Dr. Jeff Writer, engineer, researcher at University of Colorado

This course is free and open to the public.  Register now!