Bowling Green, Ky. -Dr. Chris Groves will present an invited lecture Friday (April 28) on recent water resources work in China at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.

The talk, “Water Challenges in Southwest China’s Karst Regions,” is part of the Center’s “Special Expanded Session on Water, the Environment, Public Health, and Public Policy in China.”

Dr. Groves, a professor of geography who directs the Hoffman Environmental Research Institute within Western Kentucky University’s Applied Research and Technology Program, has been studying the hydrogeology of southwest China’s extensive karst regions since 1995.

China scholars from Harvard and Canada’s University of Alberta also will make presentations at the workshop in Cambridge, Mass.

“Environmental problems in China’s karst regions share many similarities of those in the cave area here in southcentral Kentucky, including water supply challenges,” Dr. Groves said, “except that while here they are mainly an inconvenience, in rural China these have much more serious impacts on quality of life, including human health.”

Some 80 million people are estimated to live in the southwest China karst region, about 8-10 million of whom live below the Chinese poverty level equivalent to about $100 per year. Dr. Groves and his colleagues are in the final planning stages of a large China environmental health project through the U.S. Agency for International Development, scheduled to begin later this year.

“This workshop at the Fairbank Center presents a wonderful opportunity for Chris to get the word out about serious water-related environmental challenges in China,” said Dr. Jennifer Turner, who coordinates the China Environment Forum at the Washington, D.C.-based Woodrow Wilson Center.

“The water problems in China’s karst regions for rural populations are actually very underappreciated both in and outside of China,” said Dr. Turner, who is working closely with Dr. Groves in the upcoming USAID project. 

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For information, contact Chris Groves at (270) 745-5201.

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