About this item
The West without Water documents the tumultuous climate of the American West over twenty millennia, with tales of past droughts and deluges and predictions about the impacts of future climate change on water resources. Looking at the region's current water crisis from the perspective of its climate history, the authors ask the central question of what is "normal" climate for the West, and whether the relatively benign climate of the past century will continue into the future.The West without Water merges climate and paleoclimate research from a wide variety of sources as it introduces readers to key discoveries in cracking the secrets of the region's climatic past. It demonstrates that extended droughts and catastrophic floods have plagued the West with regularity over the past two millennia and recounts the most disastrous flood in the history of California and the West, which occurred in 1861-62.
About the Author
B. Lynn Ingram
B. Lynn Ingram is a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley, California. She was born in Denver, Colorado, and has since lived Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Australia, and the San Francisco Bay area. She has bachelor's and master's degrees from UCLA, and a Ph.D in Geology from Stanford University. She is a recipient of a senior Fulbright Scholar award, and is a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. She enjoys hiking the mountains of the majestic West, skiing (those same mountains!) , yoga, and spending time with her wonderful family anywhere they will go with her! "The West without Water" is her first book, and was a labor of love.
