In the midst of a severe, long-term drought, California is taking unprecedented steps to discourage watering of residential lawns, with some areas offering residents substantial cash incentives for installing water-saving landscaping, AFP reports. The “Cash in Your Lawn” program in Read more…
Groundwater reserves in the U.S. Southwest are severely low and prospects for their long-term viability are bleak as persistent drought continues to parch the land and prevent recharging, according to an assessment from NASA. As shown in this map, many Read more…
A pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites has documented a precipitous drop in freshwater supplies in the arid Middle East over the past decade. NASA said that since 2003 parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran had lost 144 cubic kilometers Read more…
A U.S. researcher says projected sea-level rise over the next century has been underestimated because current models fail to consider several critical feedbacks that might accelerate rising seas in the coming decades. While the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel
Two environmental organizations are fighting a Canadian company’s plan to mine a massive reserve of oil sands in eastern Utah, saying the project would tax water supplies in what is already the U.S.’s second-driest state. In what would be the Read more…
The vast amounts of water pumped out of the ground for irrigation, drinking water, and industrial uses will increasingly contribute to global sea level rise in the coming decades, according to a new study. According to researchers at Utrecht University, Read more…
If natural gas is a “bridge fuel,” what’s on the other side? This question kept popping up in recent weeks as a series of reports predicted gas would become a growing part of the global energy mix in the coming Read more…
A burgeoning human population has doubled the rate at which it is pumping dry sources of groundwater in recent decades, according to a new study. Relying on a global database of groundwater use and demand, the researchers from Utrecht University calcul…
The Earth is truly a blue planet; 70 percent of its surface is covered with water. Unfortunately 97.5 percent of that is salt water, unusable for humans. Fresh water accounts for the other 2.5 percent, however, about two thirds of Read more…
A pair of satellites that measures changes in the earth’s gravity has shown that the intense irrigation of a 1,200-mile swath of northern India is depleting groundwater at a rate of 1.5 to 4 inches per year. The satellites, part Read more…