Opportunities for Aquatic Sciences to Impact a Changing World

The 2016 "Environmental Sciences: Water" Gordon Research Conference will focus on the crucial and integrating role that water plays in the challenges facing society. Providing food for the growing world population requires water with sufficient quality and quantity; energy production and climate change mitigation strategies rely on water; the hydrologic cycle and chemical processes in aquatic systems will be influenced by climate change, and public health in both the developed and developing world is critically dependent upon water. Solving these challenges will require looking at problems such as contaminant fate and toxicology, water treatment, historical pollution, and energy production in the context of limited resources and a changing climate. Environmental chemists, engineers, and microbiologists, as well as biogeochemists and toxicology/health experts, will play critical roles in developing the solutions and technologies needed to resolve these problems; the conference will have sessions that integrate the perspectives of these sub-disciplines. Overall, the program will highlight innovations in engineering, analytical tools, and data analysis critical to allowing environmental scientists and engineers to understand the processes occurring in, and needed for, the restoration of natural and engineered aquatic systems.