Climate Change in the West: It's All About Water While climate change will warm the western U.S. by 2-4 degrees, temperature, impacts will be less significant than changes in the land surface water balance. The changing water balance will strain water management and stress ecosystems, bringing more wildfires, forest epidemics and fishery mortality. This is a primary theme in this week's talk by Steve Running, internationally recognized expert in terrestrial ecology, who will examine climate change and ecological sensing in this presentation co-sponsored by the Penn State Geography Department Miller Lecture Series and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI) as part of its 2008 EarthTalks Fall Colloquium Series. Runnings is a professor of ecology at the University of Montana, served as the lead author for the 4th Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore. (Javascript is required to view Mediasite content)