Mar 14th, 2008
Jackson State Community College will host a lecture from Dr. Syed Iqbal Hasnain at 12:15 p.m. on Thursday, March 20 in Ayers Auditorium in the McWherter Center. His lecture, 'Himalaya Glaciers and Climate Change' will focus on the critical issue of global warming on the eastern, central, and western Himalayan Mountains of South Asia.
The Himalayan glaciers are the least studied and least known glaciers in the world. However, in a comparative perspective, these very glaciers are vital for the livelihood of the greatest number of peoples in the world, and they act as a unique reservoir that feeds more than a dozen major rivers, among them the mighty perennial rivers of Ganges, Indus, and Brahamaputra that sustain hundreds of millions of people downstream.
The Himalayan glaciers have been subject to a process glaciologists refer to as downwasting, namely the melting, receding and ultimate withering of glaciers. The downwasting of Indian glaciers in the Himalaya will bear heavily on the region's drinking water supply, on the irrigation for agricultural production and a host of industries, and will also seriously affect a variety of ecological systems including those especially consequential for the spreading of diseases.
For an energy constrained economy like India, the prospect of diminishing river flows in the future and the possibility that energy potential from hydropower may not be achieved, will have deep-seated consequences. Hasnain's lecture will review the origins of glacial surveys and the future of remote sensing applications, glacial core sampling and glacial indexing, global warming and glacial recession, and on flora and fauna appearing at higher altitudes.
Hasnain is the former vice-chancellor (2002-06) of the University of Calicut in Kerala, India, and a former professor of environmental sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He currently serves as a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, chairs the Glacier Commission for the State of Sikkim in the eastern Himalaya, and chairs the University Grants Commission's Governing Board of the Consortium of Educational Communications. He has authored 'Himalayan Glaciers: Hydrology and Hydrochemistry,' which helped to identify the important role glaciers will play in the mountain hydrology system of the 21st Century, and he has published more than 40 scholarly articles in leading national and international journals. He is a governing council member of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, and chairs the Scientific Committee of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For further information on Hasnain's scholarly work, please visit www.highice.in.
This program is hosted and sponsored by the Jackson State Foundation's India Project, the Honors Lecture Series, and the Division of Arts and Sciences. The lecture is open and free to the public. For further information contact Dr. Lawrence Gundersen, professor of history and political science, at lgundersen@jscc.edu or call 731.424.3520 x258.