The Impact of Climate Change adn Population Growth on Water Availability (Project ID=hydro-1)
Faculty Sponsor Jay Famiglietti
      The combined influences of global change and population growth are applying significant stress to available water resources in many parts of the United States and the world. Climate change is already resulting in redistribution of precipitation, as well as changes in the timing, intensity and frequency of storms. Many parts of the world are also currently experiencing increasing drought frequency (in the mid-latitudes for example) while others (the tropics and high latitudes) are experiencing increases in precipitation. These changes in rainfall patterns must be coupled with the demographics of population growth and migration for a full assessment of the stresses on available water resources in the future.
      The goal of this project will be to conduct a new assessment of future stresses to water availability driven by these two factors. In particular, a new index of expected water stress will be developed that accounts for a) surface and groundwater resources; b) remote sensing data and global climate model results that shows how these have been changing; and c) global population growth. The resulting index can be used to produce a global map of regions that may have limited water availability due to population growth, climate change or both.

Back to UCI REU Projects Back to UCI REU Homepage Earth System Science Department