• Downstream consequences of depleting groundwater

    Many jurisdictions across the united States manage and regulate surface water and groundwater without any recognition of the connections between the two; for instance, California has no legal framework for comprehensively managing the impacts of groundwater pumping; across most of California, well owners can pump as much as they like with little accountability for the impacts on rivers, other water users and ecosystems

  • Groundwater depletion in Texas, California threatens US food security

    The U.S. food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture; for example, from 2006 to 2009, farmers in the south of California’s Central Valley depleted enough groundwater to fill the U.S. largest man-made reservoir, Lake Mead near Las Vegas — a level of groundwater depletion that is unsustainable at current recharge rates

  • New geological insights to aid oil extraction, water recovery

    By understanding the variety of pore sizes and spatial patterns in strata, geologists can help achieve more production from underground oil reservoirs and water aquifers; better understanding also means more efficient use of potential underground carbon storage sites, and better evaluations of the possible movement of radionuclides in nuclear waste depositories to determine how well the waste will be isolated

  • Solving southwest U.S. water shortage by water cap and trade?

    Lake Mead, on the Colorado River, is the largest reservoir in the United States, but users are consuming more water than flows down the river in an average year, which threatens the water supply for agriculture and households; researchers suggest that to solve this imbalance, a water cap-and-trade system, successfully implemented in Australia, should be considered for interstate water trading

  • Groundwater pumping causes sea level rise, canceling out effect of dams

    Those in charge of infrastructure protection must now worry about another source of sea level rise: water pumped out of the ground for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial use; this water ends up emptying into the world’s oceans, and scientists calculate that by 2050, groundwater pumping will cause a global sea level rise of about 0.8 millimeters per year

  • Groundwater pumping causes sea level rise, canceling out effect of dams

    Those in charge of infrastructure protection must now worry about another source of sea level rise: water pumped out of the ground for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial use; this water ends up emptying into the world’s oceans, and scientists calculate that by 2050, groundwater pumping will cause a global sea level rise of about 0.8 millimeters per year

  • Floating sensors to monitor water systems

    The Floating Sensor Network project at UC Berkeley is building a water monitoring system that can be deployed in estuarine environments and rivers, and can be integrated into existing water-monitoring infrastructure

  • The American West running low on water

    The American West has a drinking problem; on farms and in cities, people who live in that region are guzzling water at an alarming rate; scientists say that to live sustainably, they should use no more than 40 percent of the water from the Colorado River Basin; currently, however, they use 76 percent, nearly double the sustainable benchmark

  • Little of Earth’s water is usable in everyday life

    Very little of Earth’s water is usable in everyday life; about 96 percent of water on Earth is saline; of the total freshwater, over 68 percent is locked up in ice and glaciers; another 30 percent of freshwater is in the ground; rivers are the source of most of the fresh surface water people use, but they only constitute about 300 mi3 (1,250 km3), about 1/10,000th of one percent of total water

  • Clean drinking water for everyone, everywhere

    Nearly 80 percent of disease in developing countries is linked to bad water and sanitation; now scientists have developed a simple, cheap way to make water safe to drink, even if it is muddy

  • Rapid test strips detect swimming water contamination

    Water-testing technology has never been fast enough to keep up with changing conditions, nor accessible enough to check all waters; researchers have developed a rapid testing method using a simple paper strip that can detect E. coli in water within minutes; the new tool can close the gap between outbreak and detection, improving public safety

  • Himalayan glaciers decline less rapidly than previously feared

    Several hundreds of millions of people in Southeast Asia depend, to varying degrees, on the freshwater reservoirs of the Himalayan glaciers; it is thus important to detect the potential impact of climate changes on the Himalayan glaciers at an early stage; together with international researchers, glaciologists from the University of Zurich now show that the glaciers in the Himalayas are declining less rapidly than was previously thought; the scientists, however, see major hazard potential from outbursts of glacial lakes

  • Direct drinking water recycling could prevent floods

    The use of a more streamlined process to recycle wastewater could have saved Brisbane from severe flooding in 2011 and mitigated recent flood risks in NSW, a leading water expert says

  • Most states in U.S. unprepared for growing water threats to economy, health

    Only nine states in the United States have taken comprehensive steps to address their vulnerabilities to the water-related consequences of changes in climate — rainfall events which increase flooding risks to property and health change, and drought conditions which threaten supply for municipalities, agriculture, and industries — while twenty-nine states are unprepared for growing water threats to their economies and public health

  • Water scarcity in California's Bay-Delta necessitates “hard decisions”

    Simultaneously attaining a reliable water supply for California and protecting and rehabilitating its Bay-Delta ecosystem cannot be realized until better planning can identify how trade-offs between these two goals will be managed when water is limited