CO speech announcement 5/27 (Wed) 13：30 New Crisis: Recent Dramatic Changes of Global River Discharge to the Ocean – the Physical and Biogeochemical Implications. Dr. Paul Liu (Dept. of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, NCSU.)
Posts Gallery
Speaker：Dr. Paul Liu (Dept. of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, NCSU.)
Title：New Crisis: Recent Dramatic Changes of Global River Discharge to the Ocean – the Physical and Biogeochemical Implications.
Time：5/27 (Wed) 13：30 – 14：30
Location：Room 106, IONTU
ABSTRACT
Climate change has been blamed (or partially) for the recent extreme drought in California. How about the water resources status in other continents and large river basins?
Most‐recent studies (data up to 2014) show most of the major world river systems (like the Yellow, Yangtze, Pearl, Red, Mekong, Chao Phraya, Goadvari, Indus, Danube, Nile, Colorado, Mississippi, Yukon, Amazon, Paraná, etc) have experienced some dramatic changes in the last 50 years. Some rivers have completely or nearly stopped flowing to the ocean (like the Nile, Colorado, Indus and Yellow). The sediment charge in most of large rivers in North Hemisphere has decreased more than 60‐90%. Currently, these river deltas are all facing severe coastal erosion, and nearshore environmental deterioration. In contrast, some rivers in South America (like, Amazon, Parana, Orinoco, Magdalena, etc) show some very different trends.
Dr. Liu will go through with us at least 30 world major river systems one by one to look at their historical water and sediment load changes, the possible causes (human vs climate), and their impacts on their deltas and adjacent ocean environments.
More information are available at Global River and Delta Systems Source‐to‐Sink Information Center:
http://www.meas.ncsu.edu/sealevel/s2s/
