1. Department of Geology and Geological Engineering
Van Tuyl Lecture Series- Fall 2014
4:00-5:00 p.m. in Berthoud Hall Room 241   
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Dr. Roy Haggerty
Hollis M. Dole Professor of Environmental Geology
Oregon State University
“Interactions of Climate and Land Use Change with Water Resources in the Willamette Basin, Oregon”
Abstract: We have modeled water resources and land use change driven by climate change, population growth, and economics over the 21st century in the 30,000-sq-km Willamette Basin of Oregon.  Our results suggest that, at the basin scale, water quantity is relatively resilient to climate change.  Climate change is likely to lead to a reduced snow pack, which will drive significant changes in stream flow.  However, the basin’s federal reservoirs appear to mitigate some of the downstream effect of these changes, and we observe fewer hydrologic changes in model results below reservoirs.  In the lowlands, although urban water demand increases due to population growth and income growth, the accompanying expansion of urban land use onto previously irrigated farmland means that the net increase in water demand is less than might be expected because urban land use requires less water per acre than agricultural land use.