Agriculture, Water Resources Engineering and Climate Change
Event Details |
Day: Wednesday, April 24th, 2019
Time: 6 - 8 pm Location: Memorial Union, Multipurpose Room 13, Oregon State University |
Objective |
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Description |
The goal of this event is to explore the multifaceted implications of climate change in order to inspire interdisciplinary solutions. We will have two speakers. Andrew Millison, an agriculture professor at Oregon State University, will be our first speaker. He will address climate change issues in the context of agriculture. Meghna Babbar-Sebens, a professor in the Water Resources Engineering program at Oregon State University, will be our second speaker. She will discuss climate change implications for water resources engineering. Table discussions will follow each speaker. Pizza will be provided.
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Guest Speakers
Andrew Millison |
Andrew Millison has been studying, teaching and practicing Permaculture since he took his first design course in 1996. He started teaching Permaculture at the college level in 2001, and has been an instructor at OSU in the Horticulture Department since 2009. Andrew first learned Permaculture in the drylands, where he studied at Prescott College for his undergraduate and Master's degrees. In Arizona, his focus was on rainwater harvesting, greywater systems, and desert agriculture. He started a Permaculture landscape design and build company, and also worked in an ecologically-based Landscape Architecture firm. In recent years, Andrew's focus has been more on design for climate change resilience, broad scale water management for farm and development planning, Permaculture housing developments, and Oregon water law for obtaining water rights. Andrew brings his rich experience of designing and building his own and clients' projects for over 20 years to his teaching, and seeks to impart real world experience to his students. Talk Title: Wetter, dryer, warmer, colder? The effects of climate change on agriculture Abstract: Climate change is already substantially affecting worldwide agriculture, including planting times, chill hours, rainfall patterns, drought and heat stress, varietal choices, flooding, salt-water infiltration into coastal areas and aquifers, and a myriad of other ways. In this talk we will touch briefly on some of the most substantial documented effects, and then look at ways that farmers and land managers are mitigating these stresses through resilient design. We will look at permaculture, agroforestry, and the watershed perspective on climate change resilience. |
Dr. Meghna Babbar-Sebens |
Dr. Babbar-Sebens is an Associate Professor of Water Resources Engineering in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. She is also the co-director of OSU-Benton County Green Stormwater Infrastructure (OGSIR) Facility, an Oregon BEST Lab. Dr. Babbar-Sebens’ research interests lie in the area of Water Resources and Environmental Systems Analysis. She and her students conduct interdisciplinary research in the field of Hydroinformatics to develop innovative and effective monitoring, simulation-optimization, and decision support technologies for sustainable planning and management of water-based systems, including watershed systems, stormwater infrastructure, and systems at the nexus of food, energy, and water sectors.
Failure to mitigate impacts of climate change and adapt to related stresses, extreme events (such as floods, droughts, storms), and natural hazards have all been identified as the top most likely global risks by World Economic Forum in a recent 2019 report. A collective will is critical to tackling these risks. But how do we mobilize a collective problem-solving process in communities for identifying opportunities to build resilience to climate change and adapt to learned lessons? In this presentation, we will examine whether a collaboration between humans and machines could create “new ways” for communities to create solutions for this intractable problem. We will also explore how such a collaboration may look like in watershed communities prone to floods. Talk Title: Climate Change Resilience: A Case for Human-Computer Collaboration in Solving Humanity’s Most Urgent Threat Abstract: Failure to mitigate impacts of climate change and adapt to related stresses, extreme events (such as floods, droughts, storms), and natural hazards have all been identified as the top most likely global risks by World Economic Forum in a recent 2019 report. A collective will is critical to tackling these risks. But how do we mobilize a collective problem-solving process in communities for identifying opportunities to build resilience to climate change and adapt to learned lessons? In this presentation, we will examine whether a collaboration between humans and machines could create “new ways” for communities to create solutions for this intractable problem. We will also explore how such a collaboration may look like in watershed communities prone to floods. |