The Auburn University Water Resources Center has announced that Professor Chunmiao Zheng will be visiting the Auburn campus Thursday, Jan. 8, as part of the Geological Society of America’s 2009 Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecture Series. Zheng will give his lecture, “Will China Run Out of Water?” at 3 p.m. in the conference room in Duncan Hall. Faculty, staff and students are invited. For more information, contact Mike Kensler at 844-5021 or mdk0003@auburn.edu.
ABSTRACT
Will China Run Out of Water?
The American agricultural expert and environmentalist Lester Brown published a provocative book in 1995 called “Who Will Feed China: Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet.” Today, however, of a greater concern may be the question of whether the unprecedented economic growth in China over the past two decades can be sustained as environmental pollution and water shortages continue to worsen. Some people have asked, “Will China run out of water?” This question is not merely academic: China has to nourish a fifth of the global population with about seven percent of the planet’s water resources. In fact, China’s State Council, or Cabinet, warned in a drought-fighting directive issued in December 2007 that even after taking into full account water-saving measures, China’s water use will reach or approach the total volume of exploitable water resources by 2030. Ample evidence suggests that China faces a daunting water resource crisis. The country has been battling water shortages in its northern and western provinces for more than a decade. But burgeoning economic growth and widespread environmental pollution have aggravated the water storage problem. Is China really running out of water? What does all this mean? What can be done? This presentation will take a close look at the current water situation in China and discuss the options available to deal with the worsening water shortage problem. The presentation draws on the presenter’s recent research work in the North China Plain and the Ordos Basin in western China.
Biosketch of Professor Zheng
Chunmiao Zheng of the University of Alabama has been selected the 2009 Birdsall-Dreiss
Distinguished Lecturer. The lecture series is sponsored by the GSA Hydrogeology Division.
Zheng received his B.S. degree in geology from Chengdu University of Technology (China) in 1983, and a Ph.D. degree in hydrogeology with a minor in civil & environmental engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988. From 1988 to 1993, he was a hydrogeologist at the environmental consulting firm S.S. Papadopulos & Associates, Inc. Since 1993, he has been a professor of hydrogeology in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Alabama. He is also a visiting professor and founding director of the Center for Water Research at Peking University (China). The primary areas of his research are contaminant transport, ground water management, and hydrologic modeling. Zheng is developer of the widely used MT3D/MT3DMS series of contaminant transport models, and co-author of the textbook Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling, Second Edition. He is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Hydrologic Science and president-elect of the International Commission on Groundwater of the IAHS.
For additional information about Dr. Zheng, visit his website at http://hydro.geo.ua.edu.
For additional information about the AU Water Resources Center, visit our website at: www.nrmdi.auburn.edu/water or contact Mike Kensler at (334) 844-5021.
