Earth Sciences

As the human population grows--tripling in the past century while, simultaneously, quadrupling its demand for water--Earth's finite freshwater supplies are increasingly strained, and also increasingly contaminated by domestic, agricultural, and...

The St. Johns River is the longest river in Florida, containing extensive freshwater wetlands, numerous large lakes, a wide estuarine channel, and a correspondingly diverse array of native flora and fauna. Water resource management in the river's...

Water is our most fundamental natural resource, a resource that is limited. Challenges to our nation's water resources continue to grow, driven by population growth, ecological needs, climate change, and other pressures. The nation needs more and...

There has been an exponential increase in desalination capacity both globally and nationally since 1960, fueled in part by growing concern for local water scarcity and made possible to a great extent by a major federal investment for desalination...

Water is essential to life for humans and their food crops, and for ecosystems. Effective water management requires tracking the inflow, outflow, quantity and quality of ground-water and surface water, much like balancing a bank account. Currently,...

Growing demands for water in many parts of the nation are fueling the search for new approaches to sustainable water management, including how best to store water. Society has historically relied on dams and reservoirs, but problems such as high...

Recent studies of past climate and streamflow conditions have broadened understanding of long-term water availability in the Colorado River, revealing many periods when streamflow was lower than at any time in the past 100 years of recorded flows....

Rivers provide about 60 percent of the nation’s drinking water and irrigation water and 10 percent of the nation’s electric power needs. The multiple and sometimes incompatible services demanded of rivers often lead to policy and management conflicts...

This report contains a collection of papers presented at a workshop in Merida, Mexico --- Strengthening Science-Based Decision Making: Sustainable Management of Groundwater in Mexico. The cross-cutting themes of the workshop were the elements or...

Since the 1950s,the International Joint Commission (IJC) of Canada and the United States has issued water regulation and management plans for Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. Changes in recreational, environmental, navigational and other uses...