Abstract:
The world’s great river valleys lie at the center of human civilization, house enormous terrestrial ecological diversity and are home to billions of humans. Yet, with population growth and economic development, these rivers are experiencing a wide range of human-induced stresses that are threatening their ecological functioning and challenging their sustainability. Recognizing, monitoring and managing the impacts of these stressors is fundamental to achieving targets with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This talk will summarize on the wide range of stressors affecting the world’s great river valleys, focusing on aspects of climate change, damming, and riverine macroplastic pollution, with sediment being at the center of this focus. These considerations also highlight how climate change, which is altering the frequency, duration and magnitude of flood and droughts in many regions, is just one of these stressors.
In order to formulate effective management strategies, we thus need to conduct a river triage, in which the timescales and impacts of the full range of stressors, and their multifarious interactions, are assessed and prioritized. In some river basins, climate change through the impact of floods and droughts may be the most pressing stressor to account for, but in others it will adopt a lower priority. The talk will also highlight how fuller recognition of the impacts of sedimentation and human-river interactions is vital, in order that we view river hazards as being more than just about floods and water.
Bio:
Jim Best holds the Jack and Richard Threet Chair in Sedimentary Geology in the Department of Earth Science and Environmental Change at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is also Professor of Physical Geography and holds affiliate positions in Mechanical Science and Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He gained his BSc Combined Honors degree in Geology and Geography from the University of Leeds, UK, and his PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London. Best’s research interests center around understanding the physical processes of sedimentation and their products in both contemporary and ancient sedimentary environments. He has held conducted fieldwork in many countries, including Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Eire, England, New Zealand and the USA