Science Distilled: Witness to a Changing Landscape

Featured panelists:

Kendra Atleework is an award-winning author who was born and raised on the dry edge of California at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. She moved away for a decade, mostly spent being homesick and researching the place she left behind—the product of which is her first book, Miracle Country, A Memoir of a Family and a Landscape. Her writing has appeared in Best American Essays, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.

Megan Berner is a visual artist living and working in Reno. Megan works with digital and experimental techniques such as instant film, digital transfers, and cyanotypes. Her work is greatly influenced by the landscape of her native Nevada home as well as the vast prairies of the Midwest, being a twin, mapping and exploration, and countless hours of daydreaming. Megan’s work has been shown nationally and internationally. It is part of multiple collections, including the Center for Art and Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, the University of Arizona Art Museum, the University of Iowa Special Collections, and the Southern Graphics Council International Archive.

Ben Hatchett, Ph.D., is an Assistant Research Professor at DRI specializing in hydrometeorology and hydroclimatology of dryland and alpine regions spanning the past, present, and future. From atmospheric rivers and rain-on-snow events, post-fire flood hazards to heat waves, and the future of water and snow, Dr. Hatchett’s research blends data from traditional and non-traditional observations with hydrologic and earth system models and a broad network of multidisciplinary collaborators to address societally relevant challenges. When Dr. Hatchett isn’t wearing writing and coding, he enjoys skiing Sierra Cement, riding all kinds of bikes, trail running, and volunteering as a firefighter with Sonoma County’s Good Fire Alliance.