Water lecture to examine climate change perceptions

University of Nebraska water lectures are slated to run through April.
University of Nebraska water lectures are slated to run through April.

Several public lectures on a varied slate of state and regional water issues will form the University of Nebraska's spring semester water seminar series. The March 19 lecture, "Local Perspectives on a Global Climate Change Phenomenon in Northern Mountainous Thailand," will be presented at 4 p.m. in the Hardin Hall auditorium by Sujata Manandhar of Tohoku University in Japan.

Northern Mountainous Thailand villagers' perceptions of climate change and its impacts are very detailed and can give important insights into local concerns and consequences of climate change. Perceived climate changes, primarily increasing amount of rainfall and decreasing number of rainy days in last two decades, and extremely late rainfall in recent years, is consistent with observed climate data. It supports climate change and informs that its impacts will increase even in the short term. Moreover, it provides baseline information on local understanding of extreme climate events such as drought, flood and landslide events in Thailand unaddressed by global climate change models, which has important implications for the development of effective policy on climate change adaptation.

Cosponsoring the lectures with the Nebraska Water Center, part of the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute, is UNL's School of Natural Resources, which also offers the lecture series as a course for student credit.

The complete January through April schedule is posted online at watercenter.unl.edu. Individual lecture videos and speaker PowerPoint presentations will also be posted at that web address within a few days after the lecture.

More details at: http://go.unl.edu/wbvo