Among the many factors to be considered in planning a high-level nuclear waste repository in northwestern Texas are future climatic conditions and their role in affecting environmental change. In future millennia, the regional climate will almost certainly undergo episodic variations comparable to those inferred from the paleoclimatic record of the late Quaternary Period. In addition, local and perhaps global weather patterns may change in ways not previously sustained, as a consequence of inadvertent and possibly deliberate human activities. If the scope and duration of these natural and induced climatic changes were significant, they would appreciably influence geomorphic and geohydrologic processes in the Texas Panhandle.Bureau of Economic Geolog
