HR: 16:55h
AN: PA24A-04 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Engineering a Sustainable Blue Planet: Exploring the dynamics
AU: * Lall, U
EM: ula2@columbia.edu
AF: Columbia University, Dept of Earth & Env Eng, 918 Mudd, MC 4711, 500 W 120th St, New York, NY 10027
AB: Man's hand as a geomorphic agent is now endemic. The dynamics of water and other material cycles is now significantly impacted at all scales: from hillsides to watersheds to the earth, and from urban flash flood events to mean long term flow. Locally and regionally, climatic exigencies serve to spur either ruin (in the poorest societies) or a flurry of human infrastructure development. Thus, at the local scale, geomorphology depends on man's struggle for survival, and the associated interaction with nature's vagaries. Of course, we now recognize that man induced changes in land surface attributes (related to agriculture or deforestation) and in atmospheric composition translate into relatively unforeseeable climate changes, i.e., nature at a planetary scale has a different face. Despite the recognition of these interacting factors, a conceptual model that treats the dynamics of man and nature as separable and separate, dominates the earth sciences. We study global climate change and its impacts as sequential outcomes of a carbon emission scenario, and not as endogenous processes of the earth-man system with mutual feedbacks. The definition of a man-nature dynamical system is feasible as an abstraction. I explore such a definition through examples, one at the global scale, and one at a local scale. These examples are formulated in the context of meeting the challenge of poverty reduction through the provision of water for health and food, while considering vulnerability to a dynamic climate and to changes in the environment.
DE: 4522 El Ni¤o
DE: 3220 Nonlinear dynamics
DE: 1833 Hydroclimatology
DE: 1836 Hydrologic budget (1655)
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE (New category)
SC: Public Affairs [PA]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting