Liz Balgord to kick off inaugural MERI Speaker Series Oct. 26

Weber State University's Liz Balgord will present "The Impact of Glacier Retreat on High Alpine Watersheds in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru" at noon on Thursday, Oct. 26 in ES 418 as the first speaker in the new WWU Mountain Environments Research Institute (MERI) Speaker Series. 

The talk is free and open to the public.

The Cordillera Blanca in Peru contains the densest concentration of tropical glaciers in the world and is a prime place to assess the impact of climate change on high alpine environments. As the glaciers retreat they are exposing large portions of heavily mineralized rocks that are causing surface water contamination. This talk will discuss the geologic history of the Cordillera Blanca and the relationship between bedrock geochemistry, glacial retreat, and water quality in the Cordillera Blanca. She will also discuss what continued glacier retreat means for local community water supplies in the future.

Elizabeth Balgord is a geology professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Uah, specializing in sedimentology and tectonics. She earned her PhD at the University of Arizona, where she spent much her time working in the high Andes of central Argentina studying early foreland basin deposits in order to determine the timing of the initial mountain uplift.