CEE Seminar: Water Resources Sensitivity to Climate Change - What’s Going On in Brazil?

Abstract: Climate change has affected precipitation and hydrological regimes in many regions of the world. Water scarcity has rapidly spread, and satisfying human demands for this resource while maintaining its ecological support functions has been deemed to be one of the most difficult and important challenges of the 21st century. In large countries like the United States and Brazil, the impacts of climatic change are diverse and will certainly affect water availability. Our understanding of the variability and trends in hydrologic variables is crucial for sustainable and adaptable water resources management under changing environmental conditions. The only way to anticipate the possible outcomes of climate change in water dynamics is by trying to disentangle the roles played by both climate and the physical characteristics of a watershed in its hydrological regime. In this presentation we will explore how the use of synthesis analysis combined with hydroclimatogical data can be used to identify where  a possible climate change would have the highest impacts on the water resources of Brazil.

Bio: Pedro Chaffe is an assistant professor of sanitary and environmental engineering at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil. Pedro earned a doctorate in urban and environmental engineering at Kyoto University, Japan, in 2012. He is the supervisor of the Watershed Hydrology Lab (www.labhidro.ufsc.br) at UFSC. He teaches hydrology and water resources management, and his main research activities comprise: field measurement of hydrological processes, rainfall-runoff modeling, and analysis of hydroclimatological data. Chaffe’s research interest is trying to understand how climate and landscapes influence the way catchments store and release water.