Lunch provided on a first come, first served basis.

Abstract:  China’s arid western Xinjiang region poses a significant challenge for sustainable water management, due to its combination of rapid development, variable and vulnerable climate, and longstanding social and political conflicts over water allocation. The Kaidu-Bosten-Konqi (KBK) basin typifies these challenges: it is experiencing rapid population growth and economic development, agricultural expansion, urbanization, industrialization and social conflicts - all of which are directly linked to the climatically variable supply of fresh water from glaciers and snowmelt in the Tian Shan range. Water allocation is becoming progressively more complex as competing interest groups struggle to shape water management policy, including recent Han Chinese immigrants and multiple ethnic and religious minority populations; national, regional, and local governments; urbanites, farmers, and nomadic pastoralists; and Xinjiang’s unique quasi-military bingtuan organization that has its own local population, farms, and industrial centers alongside the regular civil government. To better comprehend the underlying physical and social issues confronting these diverse stakeholders, this project will study the entire KBK system, from its montane headwaters to its lower reaches in the Korla/Yuli oasis, to capture the nested and cascading dimensions of water supply and delivery. We will gain an in-depth understanding of the interactions and feedbacks between climate, glaciers and snowpack, river channels, land use, and water governance aiming to establish conceptual and physical models for predicting future scenarios that support sustainability-oriented decisions. In addition to providing a comprehensive synthesis and assessment of the sustainability of water management in the KBK watershed itself, we will also examine its linkages to the Lower Tarim River system. During the past decade, the Chinese government has been transferring water from the KBK system into the Tarim for restoration of degraded riparian ecosystems, and current plans call for even more exchanges between the KBK and Tarim systems. Our proposed research on regional water availability will further provide a critical and hitherto neglected environmental and political assessment of the sustainability of these "ecological conveyances."