Grassroots Community Network

Speaker: Sara Porterfield, PhD Description: The Colorado River has long served as an icon of the arid American West and the central character in the story of human manipulation of water resources in the United States. However, the Colorado River Basin has shaped and been shaped by the development and use of rivers around the world. In this talk, Sara Porterfield will explore the history of a global exchange of information, technology, and ideology between the Colorado River Basin and international river basins in the late nineteenth century—an exchange that continues to the present day. Through stories of the engineers, bureaucrats, policymakers, and whitewater boaters who traveled to and from the Colorado River Basin to rivers around the world, she will show how the international history of the Colorado River Basin can help us better understand the past while also providing valuable lessons and insights for current policymaking and water management decisions. Speaker Bio: Sara Porterfield, PhD, is a histor