JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2015 • NEBRASKAland 29
the stories of water through the lens
of science, agriculture, wildlife,
recreation, urban and industrial use.
We are working with educational
experts to bring the project into the
classroom by creating content that
will be used in lesson plans that can
be folded into educational curriculum
with a grant from the Nebraska
Environmental Trust. And we are
beginning fieldwork to create a feature
documentary film with Nebraska
Educational Television about the Platte
Basin that synthesizes wildlife and people with ecology and
economy, and is intended for a national public television
audience.
By 2050, the world will need to feed its estimated 9 billion
people with less water and fewer resources. In Nebraska, we
will need to practice and continue to evolve precision-based
agriculture. We will need to be vigilant and effective at
keeping grass in grasslands and protecting both our soils and
our biodiversity. We will need to pay attention not only to
the quantity of water in our rivers, but the quality and timing
of river flows, and understand the precious groundwater
connections that sits quietly beneath our feet. And all these
challenges will exist underneath the growing specter of
climate change.
Here in Nebraska, the story of all living things starts
and stops with water, and those stories are almost always
personal. The Platte is our river and it is part of a shared
watershed. In a sense, water is our never-ending story here
in the Plains, and we must appreciate, understand and protect
it for our sake and for our children's future. ■
To learn more about the project, visit
Plattebasintimelapse.com. Michael Forsberg, a
Lincoln native, is a longtime contributing editor
to NEBRASKAland Magazine.
In late summer 2013, this view from a PBT camera at Audubon's Rowe Sanctuary in
central Nebraska shows a dry river bed. A few weeks later, the same camera captures
the Platte swelling out of its banks after major rains and flash floods in the South
Platte watershed along the Colorado Front Range eventually made its way downstream
and through the state of Nebraska.
