November 14, 2018
As important as your carbon footprint is, you must not forget your water footprint. What often happens is that people focus on the water they use directly from the faucet, and don’t realize their large use of “virtual water,” or all water that goes into the food, consumer goods and energy they consume every day. […]
November 13, 2018
Trees are an active part of the water cycle – they suck water out of the ground through their roots and release water vapor into the atmosphere through pores in their foliage. En masse, they create giant rivers of water in the air that form clouds and create rainfall hundreds or even thousands of miles […]
November 9, 2018
Arizona has been reusing wastewater since the 1920’s, but new rules permitting direct potable reuse make it possible for utilities to plan new drinking water projects. Treated wastewater would have to go through “a multistage, multi-barrier treatment process with controls, real-time monitoring, a whole lot of microbial monitoring and chemical monitoring,” according to hydrogeologist Chuck Graf. […]
November 7, 2018
Residential water management has long been measured by houses served per acre-foot, or the amount of water it takes to cover one acre a foot deep in water. This has been especially important in the West because water isn’t always in great supply in western portions of the United States. The standard has been changing […]
November 5, 2018
In recent weeks, a number of environmentally minded political pundits have stated that voting for enlightened politicians is the sole way to change direction and policy towards a more sustainable society, particularly when it comes to climate action. In a Slate article, two social psychology researchers review the science and show that norm changes — […]
November 2, 2018
Warming in the Arctic is changing how the jet stream functions, and as a result, weather is getting more extreme, as the world witnessed in 2018. An international group of researchers found that increased warming caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has constrained the action of jet stream winds which has increased the […]
October 31, 2018
Gabriel Lozada, a theoretical mathematician at the University of Utah and a pro bono consultant for the Utah Rivers Council, suspected that government officials were overstating the benefits and ignoring potential costs of a water supply pipeline that would take water Colorado River out of Lake Powell to southern Utah. So Lozada built a mathematical […]
October 29, 2018
Scientists at the European Union’s Joint Research Centre completed a study that identified potential zones of freshwater conflict and developed strategies to boost cooperation between affected countries. Because competition over limited water resources remains a chief concern that can create and worsen political tensions, instability and societal unrest, attention to such factors as climate change […]
October 19, 2018
A new study evaluating evapotranspiration trends in California published in Water Resources Research by Szilagyi and Jozsa used a modeling approach called “the complementary relationship of evaporation,” which predicts evapotranspiration without needing detailed information on the Earth’s surface using observations of the humidity of the lower atmosphere. The study demonstrated that irrigated regions had sustained […]