Gary Griggs: Perils in Paradise

The geological processes and climate that have produced the landscape that has drawn people to Santa Cruz for decades has also wreaked havoc on a regular basis, whether floods, earthquakes, landslides or coastal storms. Paradise here comes with a price, and climate change may be raising the ante a bit more.

Santa Cruz is just an adolescent in geologic time, as Gary Griggs, Distinguish Professor of Earth and Planetary Science and Director of Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, will explain during this special event. We are surrounded by a landscape that is constantly changing, whether the coastline, the stream valleys or the hillsides. The region has a long history of natural disasters, whether earthquakes, floods, hillside failures or coastal erosion, although we tend to suffer from collective amnesia and quickly forget the disasters of the past. What does our past tell us about the future and is there any safe place to live in paradise?