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>> Welcome to Water In The Western United States.
I'm glad you signed up and you're joining us on our exploration of water resources
in the Western US from a variety of different angles.
Legal and historical, social and physical with an emphasis on climate,
but also controversial issues including the future of this area.
Before we talk about how this course works and what you'll be learning,
we want you to get excited about the materials.
>> So let's go on a tour of the West.
The West is a land of start contrasts.
It's home to gorgeous, but very dry deserts.
While it's also home to enormous mountain peaks covered by snow almost
the entire year.
In the West, you'll find the lowest point in the continental United States,
well below sea level.
While you'll also find the highest peaks embedded within the two great mountain
ranges of the Western United States.
The Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains.
>> Across the West,
you find major metropolitan areas like the megalopolis of Los Angeles.
Large areas of the West are very sparsely populated,
including vast tracts of land that are owned by the US Federal government.
The area has long been inhabited by various Native American people, but
has been settled by European Americans over the last roughly.
150 years,
those people have started economies based on mining, agriculture and logging.
In more recent years, the West has added the moneys and
recreation based component to the economy and a lot of areas are known for
their world famous natural attractions and activities like skiing and fishing.
>> In the arid West, times of drought are all too common.
Yet, massive thunderstorms, rapid snow melt and
other events can also cause destructive flooding in many river basins.
In fact, this variability in stream flow is a characteristic of Western waterways.
So to combat draughts and floods and indeed just to make this region habitable,
the West employs some of the most impressive storage and
diversion projects you'll find in the entire country.
And its home to some of our largest of our works projects,
such as the Hoover dam outside of Las Vegas.
>> Not all of the West is a dry land.
When we talk about the Western United States, we refer to the land up
the continental United States that's West of the 100th meridian,
which you know runs roughly down the middle of the country.
And that is the area where rainfall drops to under 20 inches or
500 millimeters per year, which really is the lower limit of rain fed agriculture.
But even that total amount of precipitation of 20 inches,
doesn't really give a good sense for the incredible variability in precipitation.
Seasonal, year to year and decadal, which is another characteristic of the West.
>> The life blood of farms, cities and businesses in this region is the water
that begins as snowmelt in the mountains and flows through grasslands and
dry deserts.
Compared to some of the wetter parts of the country,
these streams are relatively tiny.
But their importance to life in this region cannot be overstated.
With so little water and so much depending on them,
it's inevitable that conflicts and unique issues arise.
And that's at the heart of so
much of what we'll be talking about over the next month.
>> So, in this course, we'll be providing you with a context through which you'll be
able to understand these issues.
So we're aiming to familiarize you with the physical and
social geography of the American West.
Provide a broad background of the major political, social and
legal issues surrounding water management in the American West.
Discuss how the present climate drives the hydrology of the American West and
how the warming planet will change the climate.
And describe major ongoing water related issues in the West and
possible solution to challenges the region faces.
>> We know many of you may not be from the Western US and we particularly welcome
those of you who are coming from other regions of the country and
other regions of the world.
We think that the complex interplay of science, geography and
policy make for a fascinating study of how a scarce, but
necessary resource can be managed in an ever changing world.
We know that what has happened with water in the Western United States has informed
and been informed by water resource issues in other parts of the world,
such as Australia's Murray-Darling basin.
So we hope this course is appealing to you, whether you're here to learn more
about your own backyard or that you know nothing about this region already.
Regardless of where you live, we really hope that we can tell you something about
water resource management here that you can apply to your own home area.
>> So thanks for joining us.
For the rest of this module, we'll be talking about details of the water cycle,
about the geography of the West in just a little bit more detail and
explain how this course works.
And then we'll start our first module next week.
See you next time.
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