Laurence C. Smith of Brown University will give the talk "Rivers of Power: How an Ancient Force Rules Us Still" on April 13 at 7:00 p.m. in the Union Auditorium. The lecture is free, hosted by the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and open to the public.
Smith is the John Atwater and Diana Nelson University Professor of Environmental Studies in the Institute at Brown for Environment & Society (IBES) and the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS). His book Rivers of Power was a GEOGRAPHICAL Best Book of 2020. His research interests include the Arctic, water resources, and satellite remote sensing technologies.
This talk is for the Norman D. Smith Lecture For Public Understanding of Science. Norman Smith was a professor in the department and served as chair from 1998 to 2004. For more than two decades, he led Nebraska Citizens for Science, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to advancing science literacy in the state.
About This Talk
There is a vast, arterial power humming all around us, hiding in plain sight. It has shaped human civilizations more than any road, technology, or war. It has opened frontiers, founded cities, settled borders, and fed billions. It promotes life, forges peace, grants power, and capriciously destroys everything in its path. Increasingly domesticated, even manacled, it is an ancient power that rules us still.
That power is rivers, and this talk will explore some of the many ways that humans have used rivers over time and how we continue to rely on them today. Since our earliest cities established along the Tigris-Euphrates, Indus, Nile, and Yellow Rivers, anthropogenic use of rivers has changed over time and varied by region. Yet their critical importance to society has persisted because they provide five fundamental benefits: access, natural capital, territory, well-being, and a means of projecting power. The manifestations of these benefits have changed, but our demands for them have not.
