The West without water : what past floods, droughts, and other climatic clues tell us about tomorrow /
B. Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam ; foreword by Sandra L. Postel.
- Berkeley : University of California Press, (c)2013.
- 1 online resource
Includes bibliographies and index.
From drought to deluge : "normal" climate in the West -- The 1861-1862 floods : lessons lost -- The great droughts of the twentieth century -- Why is climate so variable in the West? -- Reading the past : the Earth's history books -- From ice to fire : into the Holocene -- The "long drought" of the mid-Holocene -- Ice returns : the neoglaciation -- The great "medieval drought" -- The little ice age : megafloods and climate swings -- Why climate changes : cycles and oscillations -- The hydraulic era : salmon and dams -- Future climate change and the American West -- What the past tells us about tomorrow.
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 intro.