Dr. Nandita Basu, @CWPUW @UWaterloo is the 2nd speaker for ‘Distinguished Lectures by Women Scientists Working on Climate Science and Policy’ as part of @ClimateIITB 10th anniversary celebrations!
Topic: Water Quality Challenges and Opportunities from the Local to the Global Scale
Abstract: Water quality is under severe threat, from intensive agricultural practices and widespread over-application of commercial fertilizers, to climate change and wildfires threatening our drinking water supplies, to emerging contaminants from rapid urbanization and concentrated livestock operations. Multiple new policies have been developed to improve water quality in our lakes and streams; however, water quality remains a persistent problem. In this talk, Nandita Basu will address the nature of water quality challenges, especially focusing on long term legacies of nutrients, and discuss opportunities for addressing some of these challenges through a combination of top-down analysis — using large geospatial datasets to identify watershed functional traits — and mechanistic modeling, from the reach to the watershed scale. Through this discussion, she will highlight novel approaches for regional- and global-scale solutions to water quality challenges.
Nandita Basu is a Professor and Canada Research Chair of Global Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology, and the Director of the Collaborative Water Program at the University of Waterloo. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Hydrology. She is an environmental engineer, who uses data science, process modeling and remote sensing to explore how climate, land use, and management impacts surface and groundwater quality across agricultural, urban and forested landscapes, and from watershed to the regional and global scales. Her research leverages these insights to develop watershed management strategies that maximizes environmental benefits without significant economic costs. She leads multiple large initiatives, including a recently funded $6M grant on nature-based solutions in agricultural landscapes.
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