• Texas Must Address Groundwater Future: Study

    Long-term water security is essential for the future of Texas, and the state acutely needs a common law system that can balance world-scale agricultural activity, industrial development and urban growth while also protecting private property rights, according to new research.

  • Difficult Tradeoffs: Climate Change and Dwindling Water Resources

    While a drought grips the southwestern United States and water supplies dwindle, decision-makers face increasingly difficult decisions about who, or what, gets water. Researchers have developed a model — the Framework for Assessment of Complex Environmental Tradeoffs (FACET) — designed to navigate and rigorously evaluate competing environmental, economic, and social impacts.

  • A Dangerous Fire Season Looms as the Drought-Stricken Western U.S. Heads for a Water Crisis

    Just about every indicator of drought is flashing red across the western U.S. after a dry winter and warm early spring. The snowpack is at less than half of normal in much of the region. Reservoirs are being drawn down, river levels are dropping and soils are drying out. It’s only May, and states are already considering water use restrictions to make the supply last longer.

  • Triggering Rain Where Water Is Scarce

    A new method to trigger rain where water is scarce is being tested in the UAE, using drones. The drones carry an electric charge that is released into a cloud, giving cloud droplets the jolt they need to clump together and fall as rain.

  • New Tool Could Guide Floodwater Management and Combat Ongoing Drought

    Using a new computer framework, scientists are able to project future floodwaters under a changing climate. The approach could help California water managers plan for and redirect floodwaters toward groundwater aquifers, alleviating both flood and drought risks.

  • Road Salts Are Threatening World's Freshwater Supplies

    When winter storms threaten to make travel dangerous, people often turn to salt, spreading it liberally over highways, streets and sidewalks to melt snow and ice. A new study warns that introducing salt into the environment — whether it’s for de-icing roads, fertilizing farmland or other purposes — releases toxic chemical cocktails that create a serious and growing global threat to our freshwater supply and to human health.

  • Interstate Water Wars Are Heating Up Along with the Climate

    Interstate water disputes are as American as apple pie. States often think a neighboring state is using more than its fair share from a river, lake or aquifer that crosses borders. Climate stresses are raising the stakes.

  • The U.S. Water and Wastewater Crisis – How Many Wake-up Calls Are Enough?

    In February, much of Texas plunged into darkness when the state’s electricity grid failed due to extreme cold weather conditions. What started as a foreseeable blackout quickly became a life-threatening calamity. “This catastrophe illustrates what happens when aging and inadequate infrastructure is hit by extreme rain or snow—an increasingly regular occurrence due to climate change,” Lucía Falcón Palomar, Obinna Maduka, and JoAnn Kamuf Ward write. “And, the matter extends well beyond Texas. It is easy to forget that, within U.S. borders, communities have long endured the conditions seen in Texas in February.”

  • Solving Problems for the World’s Freshwater Supply

    Water’s value to society goes far beyond quenching thirst. An indispensable resource, it is required not only to sustain life, but also for economic prosperity. Water, for example, is needed to generate energy and to manufacture nearly everything, from food to clothes, cars and electronics. Our future economy and national security highly depend on the availability of clean water. But there is a limited supply of renewable fresh water when and where it is needed.

  • Drought May Lead to Elevated Levels of Naturally Occurring Arsenic in Private Domestic Wells

    An estimated 4.1 million people in the lower 48 states are potentially exposed to arsenic levels that exceed EPA’s drinking water standards.

  • Water Wars Are Here

    In 2009, the U.K. intelligence services submitted their annual intelligence report to then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, warning of the coming threat of “water wars” between states vying for diminishing fresh-water resources. Rising water-related tensions between India and Pakistan and between Ethiopia and its neighbors bear out the report’s warnings. The recent decision by Turkey to use its dam system to limit the amount of water flowing into Syria is a demonstration of using the control over water sources for exerting pressure on neighboring states.

  • Kurds in Northern Syria Warn of Water Crisis

    Turkey has reduced the volume of water flowing downstream toward Syria, and the first to feel the pinch are the Kurds in Syria’s Kurdish region. In the last decade. Turkey has built twenty-two dams in southeast Anatolia, leading to fears in Syria and Iraq that Turkey was going to use its control over the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates to apply political pressure on both countries.

  • Sustainable Water Management Key to Scaling Up Bioenergy Production

    To avoid a substantial increase in water scarcity, biomass plantations for energy production need sustainable water management, a new study shows.

  • Adaptation, Not Irrigation Recommended for Midwest Corn Farmers

    A warming climate may not increase water demand for Midwest crops that may instead be adapted through soil management to changing air temperatures and moisture, say researchers helping farmers manage the challenge.

  • Sustainable Water Management Key to Scaling Up Bioenergy Production

    Bioenergy is frequently considered one of the options to reduce greenhouse gases for achieving the Paris climate goals, especially if combined with capturing the CO2 from biomass power plants and storing it underground. To avoid a substantial increase in water scarcity, biomass plantations for energy production need sustainable water management, a new study shows.