The Rio Grande flows nearly 2,000 miles from its headwaters in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. It is the primary source of water for more than 13 million agricultural, municipal and industrial water users in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and northern Chihuahua, Mexico. A new study finds that peak runoff on the Rio Grande could arrive earlier in the season, negatively impacting a watershed where demand already exceeds supply.

California’s Water Resilience Portfolio Initiative is a multi-billion dollar effort that encourages different water utilities and irrigation districts to work together to build shared infrastructure to reduce the effects of droughts, but a number of questions remain regarding how best to structure these agreements.

From the Euphrates to the Mekong, dams that ensure one country’s water supply risk leaving others parched. But shared water resources can be a source of peace as well as conflict.

Lakes serve as a major global source of freshwater. As temperatures continue to get warmer, so will lakes. As global average temperatures rise, lake evaporation is projected to increase at double the rate of ocean evaporation. However, future increases in lake evaporation vary substantially across regions.

An estimated 370,000 Californians rely on drinking water that may contain high levels of the chemicals arsenic, nitrate or hexavalent chromium. Researchers say that Californians impacted by unsafe drinking water from other compounds for which data are not as widely available.

California is preparing for a third straight year of drought, and officials are tightening limits on water use to levels never seen so early in the water year. Especially worrying is the outlook for the Sierra Nevada, the long mountain chain that runs through the eastern part of the state. California’s cities and its farms – which grow over a third of the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruit and nuts – rely on runoff from the mountains’ snowpack for water.

Though water covers 71 percent of earth’s surface, more than 2.5 billion people in the world lack access to fresh water at least once a month. Researchers are seeking new possibilities in water purification through using AI agents in the desalination process.

With mountain snowpacks shrinking in the western U.S., a new Lab study analyzes when a low-to-no-snow future might arrive and implications for water management.

Florida is known for water. Between its beaches, swamps, storms and humidity, the state is soaked. And below its entire surface lies the largest freshwater aquifer in the nation. As rising sea levels threaten coastal areas, scientists are using an emerging nuclear dating technique to track the ins and outs of water flow.