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350 NM Speaker Series: New Mexico’s Landscapes, Soils and Water Resources in a Changing Climate
October 23, 2023 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm MDT
What does climate change hold for New Mexico?
With average temperatures projected to rise 5 to 7 °F in New Mexico by 2070 and with little overall change in precipitation totals, how will the state change over the next 50 years? Will there still be trees in our forests? Will we have enough water to farm? Fish in our streams?
UNM Professor Emeritus Les McFadden is one of the authors of the award-winning, recently published climate analysis prepared for New Mexico’s 50-year Water Plan. He will share his insights into how climate change will contour New Mexico’s landscape – from migrating sand dunes in the Navajo Nation to the loss of 1000-year old soils on southern slopes of the Jemez Mountains to the return of dust bowl conditions in the eastern plains.
Professor McFadden received an MS & PhD in geosciences from the University of Arizona after earning a BA in anthropology from Stanford. He served as chair of the E&PS Department (1999-2007) and is a fellow of the Geological Society of America (GSA). In 2017 he received the Kirk Bryan Award for Excellence from the Geological Society of America (GSA). He is one of ten authors/editors of “Climate Change in New Mexico Over the Next 50 Years: Impacts on Water Resources,” (also knowns as the Leap Ahead Report) developed by the New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources. The report, which recently was given the John C. Frye Environmental Geology Award by the GSA, synthesizes existing peer-reviewed published research relevant to the broad topic of changes to New Mexico’s climate over the next 50 years and resultant impacts on water resources.
Who: Les McFadden, UNM professor emeritus in the University of New Mexico Earth & Planetary Sciences Department and Contributor to the NM Climate Change report (see below)
Where: Pre-register on Zoom