Climate fluctuations and the pulse of bank erosion on the Mekong River Event
- Time:
- 17:30 - 18:30
- Date:
- 23 November 2011
- Venue:
- Building 58, Lecture Theatre 1067, Highfield Campus
For more information regarding this event, please telephone Maggie Harriss on 44(0)23 8059 7568 or email M.A.Harriss@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
Inaugural Lecture by Professor Stephen Darby
In this lecture, Professor Darby will show how bank erosion on the Mekong - one of the world’s great rivers - has in the last 100 years been responding to hydrology and climate change. Using a combination of hydrological and bank erosion modelling (with content tailored to non-experts!), Steve will present new work that quantifies, for the very first time, how monsoon intensity, Tibetan snow melt regimes, and tropical cyclones combine to determine erosion rates. With significant changes to the Mekong’s future flow regime and climate projected as a result of anthropogenic climate change and hydropower dam construction, Steve will conclude by discussing the possible impacts on both the Mekong and the lives of the people who live along its river banks.
Speaker information
Professor Stephen Darby,Educated at Queen Mary, University of London (BSc in Geography 1990) and the University of Nottingham (PhD in Fluvial Geomorphology 1994), Professor Stephen Darby held posts at the University of Florence in Italy and at the US Department of Agriculture’s National Sedimentation Laboratory in Oxford, Mississippi, before joining Geography and Environment at Southampton in 1997. Appointed to his personal chair in 2009, Steve has broad interests in river morphodynamics, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on river bank erosion. His current research interests centre on predicting how large, monsoon-affected, rivers respond to environmental change.