Braiding Water Knowledge

Abstract:

Increasing carbon emissions are driving global climate change, but quantifying and planning for the impacts on temperature, rainfall, and the sustainability of water is challenging in many regions. Exploration of past and present-day environments, and uses and understandings of water can provide critical information and transform our ability to understand the processes impacting water and our relationship to water in the long-term. Diverse Perspectives on Water is an innovative program that was developed collaboratively through the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science and the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA to study the past, present, and future of water, environmental change, and sustainability in southwestern United States. This project combines tools and techniques from diverse cultures and disciplines, including: American Indian studies and Iindigenous knowledges, sedimentary geology, ethnography, atmospheric science, hydrology, archeology, policy, law, and education. Through combining our strands of convergence research from different disciplines, we are examining and sharing diverse perspectives on the water cycle, including what water is and how people use, value, and steward it, how different fields and people approach questions about water in the context of environmental change, what different disciplinary and cultural perspectives are on water sustainability and histories in a region, and how these diverse perspectives on water inform the ways we think and communicate about environmental futures.