CEE Seminar: Interactions Among Land, Water and Society in the Semiarid U.S. and Mexico

Abstract: Water, the terrestrial biosphere, climate and society all influence each other. In arid and semiarid climates, the scarcity of water leads to a larger role in these interactions. This is particularly true in the semiarid western U.S. and northern Mexico, where transboundary water resources, the North American Monsoon and international trade create numerous links between land and water use across the border. I have been using a combination of process-based modeling, remote sensing and government agricultural and trade datasets to examine interactions among land, water and society in this region. Here I will show examples of links between land cover, land use, hydrology and water use that illustrate why coordinated, binational management of land and water are necessary for a sustainable future in the region.

Bio: Bohn, who uses regional surface-water modeling to study interactions among climate, land, water and society, earned a B.S. in engineering physics and an M.S. in geophysics, both from UC Berkeley. After several years in the private sector, including three years at Microsoft and a year developing a salmon-tracking database at NOAA Fisheries in Seattle, he returned to academia to pursue a Ph.D. in hydrology (civil and environmental engineering) at the University of Washington. For his dissertation, Bohn used process-based modeling and remote-sensing datasets to study interactions between climate, water table levels and greenhouse gas emissions from Siberian wetlands. For his postdoctoral work at Arizona State University, he has been studying interactions among land, water, and society in the semiarid western U.S. and northern Mexico.