April 12, 10:30am in PACCAR 202
Brian Chaffin, Assistant Professor of Water Policy and Governance in the W.A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation at the University of Montana.
Abstract: The Klamath River Basin straddles northern California and southern Oregon and has been the locus of a century-long struggle for community stability and ecosystem function in a system of over-allocated water resources. Along the Klamath River, multiple hydroelectric dams and extensive irrigation infrastructure have created economic and community dependence on irrigated agriculture as well as severely reduced aquatic habitat for the multiple endangered and threatened species in the basin. In the past several decades, however, the communities of the Klamath Basin have worked together in an effort to transform water management to promote greater resilience of both human populations and aquatic species to ongoing disturbances such as drought, and to comply with competing social, cultural, and political demands on water. In this seminar, Brian Chaffin will provide a brief overview of the contemporary applications of resilience as a framing concept for research on coupled, social-ecological systems. Specifically, Brian will discuss how certain aspects of “resilience thinking” have inspired new avenues for both developing and interrogating governance of broader human-environmental systems as well as management regimes for specific landscapes and resources such as those in the Klamath Basin. Brian will present evidence from his own social science research on governance transitions at the food-energy-water nexus, particularly from a case study of contemporary conflict and cooperation in the Klamath River Basin. Brian is an Assistant Professor of Water Policy and Governance in the W.A. Franke College of Forestry & Conservation at the University of Montana and a co-PI on an NSF Research Traineeship Program focused on innovations at the food-energy-water nexus.