Ghana 2017 - Day 26. Three more days of classes to go!

Today, Tuesday, was a regular class day, with two more to go. I had reserved the best for last, and today the lecture was about drought and how to manage it, which I happen to think is a pretty cool subject. Part of it is that there are so many interesting side subjects, such as the record of droughts in California over the last 1,000 years, or the question of whether droughts are linked to climate change or are simply the result of precipitation being a random process. And how do you manage a random process?

I normally follow with the ways available to society for the mitigation of drought impacts, which is a rather long discussion that branches into engineering, preparedness, and society’s perception. Given that groundwater use is one of the main tools we have to make up for dwindling surface water supplies, I then end talking about sustainable management of water resources (can you sustainable manage a random process?).

Alas, my enthusiasm was slow to seep into some of the students, who by now are just fixedly focused in reaching the finish line. Let’s see if they do better tomorrow, when we will talk about strategic planning, integrated regional water management, and the tools available to the water manager.