Global Water, Global Change, and the Transformation of a Science

Charles J. Vörösmarty, Ph.D., is the Founding Director of the Environmental Sciences Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. Dr. Vörösmarty’s research focuses on the development of computer models and geospatial data sets used in synthesis studies of interactions linking the water cycle, climate, biogeochemistry and anthropogenic activities. He has modeled local, regional, and continental to global-scale dynamics of water balance, discharge, and constituent fluxes in river systems, including assessments of the impact of large scale water engineering on the terrestrial water cycle. His work on human-water interactions includes analysis of databases depicting reservoir construction worldwide and how they generate downstream coastal zone risks, global threats to human water security and aquatic biodiversity, and the use of natural capital and engineering to realize global water security. His recent work focuses on the capacity of traditional engineering (gray) and nature-based (green) infrastructure to contribute to the performance of Food-Energy-Water Systems (FEWS) as well as global water security more generally. In 2018, he helped lead a U.S.-Hungarian graduate student research project on sustainable regional re-development in western Hungary, where he continues to advise the government and academic partners on best combinations of nature-based, engineered, and human institutional infrastructures.

Dr. Vörösmarty has provided scientific guidance to a variety of U.S. and international water consortia. He has led numerous interdisciplinary study teams carrying out research on hydrology and water resource systems worldwide; strategic regional food-water-energy and environmental risks; and, strategies for combining engineering and natural capital for water resource security. From 2004-2015 he served as co-Chair of the Global Water System Project under the Earth System Partnership Program. He spearheaded efforts to develop global-scale indicators of water stress and worked with chief United Nations delegates who negotiated water-related Sustainable Development Goals. He served as consultant to the 24-agency United Nations World Water Assessment Programme and represented the International Council of Scientific Unions at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development meetings. Working with partners from UBS and the PGGM Dutch pension fund, he developed methods to use scientifically-based metrics on water resources to help guide sustainable investment strategies by the private sector.

In the U.S., he has served on a broad array of national panels. These have included the Arctic Research Commission (appointed by Presidents Bush and Obama), the NASA Earth Science Subcommittee, the National Research Council Committee on Hydrologic Science (as Chair), and the NRC Review Committee on the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Before coming to the ASRC and The City College of New York, Dr. Vörösmarty was a Research Full Professor at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire, where he was founder and director of its Water Systems Analysis Group from 1992 through 2008.