Water resources articles within Nature Geoscience

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  • News & Views |

    The El Niño Southern Oscillation strongly impacts climate, but its variability remains difficult to predict. A conceptual model based on shifting circulation patterns offers a simple explanation for this complex behaviour.

    • Antonietta Capotondi

  • News & Views |

    Controversy pervaded the June 2022 UN Ocean Conference, with partisan alliances forming around burgeoning environmental and social issues. Yet, out of the talks, emerged strong aspirations across UN states and other stakeholders to restore and protect the ocean.

    • Lisa A. Levin

  • Article |

    Observations suggest early twentieth-century human activities, in the form of canal construction, increased groundwater availability in northwest India and Pakistan, in contrast to recent depletion driven by tubewell development and low rainfall.

    • D. J. MacAllister
    • , G. Krishan
    •  & A. M. MacDonald

  • Comment |

    A more comprehensive understanding of the role of irrigation in coupled natural–human systems is needed to minimize the negative consequences for climate, ecosystems and public health.

    • Sonali Shukla McDermid
    • , Rezaul Mahmood
    •  & Zoe Lieberman

  • Editorial |

    Wetlands provide a wealth of societal and climatic benefits. Balanced conservation strategies are needed to ensure their protection in the twenty-first century and beyond.

  • Article |

    Intensive irrigation in India cools the land surface, but increases the moist heat stress in South Asia, according to an analysis of observational datasets and meteorological models.

    • Vimal Mishra
    • , Anukesh Krishnankutty Ambika
    •  & Matthew Huber

  • Comment |

    Land-use and land-cover changes are accelerating. Such changes can homogenize the water cycle and undermine planetary resilience. Policymakers and practitioners must consider water–vegetation interactions in their land-management decisions.

    • Delphis F. Levia
    • , Irena F. Creed
    •  & Michael Bruen

  • Comment |

    It is commonly thought that old groundwater cannot be pumped sustainably, and that recently recharged groundwater is inherently sustainable. We argue that both old and young groundwaters can be used in physically sustainable or unsustainable ways.

    • Grant Ferguson
    • , Mark O. Cuthbert
    •  & Jennifer C. McIntosh

  • Article |

    The interface between riverbed and aquifer is a biogeochemical reaction hotspot for arsenic release from river sediments, according to numerical simulations of groundwater flow and biogeochemical reaction processes.

    • Ilka Wallis
    • , Henning Prommer
    •  & Rolf Kipfer

  • Article |

    Glaciers in the Andes have lost about 23 Gt of mass per year between 2000 and 2018, with the fastest loss in Patagonia, according to time series of digital elevation models that are based on ASTER stereo images.

    • I. Dussaillant
    • , E. Berthier
    •  & L. Ruiz

  • Article |

    Only about 15% of water cycle diagrams include human interaction with water, although human freshwater appropriation amounts to about half of global river discharge, according to an analysis of 464 water cycle diagrams and a synthesis of the global water cycle.

    • Benjamin W. Abbott
    • , Kevin Bishop
    •  & Gilles Pinay

  • News & Views |

    The Laurentide Ice Sheet sapped the strength of the North American monsoon during the last ice age, but the ice sheet’s grip on the monsoon weakened as it retreated northwards.

    • Sarah E. Metcalfe

  • Article |

    Depending on their connectivity to the river network, wetlands can be much more efficient at removing nitrate in a watershed than common nitrogen mitigation strategies according to an analysis of the Minnesota River basin.

    • Amy T. Hansen
    • , Christine L. Dolph
    •  & Jacques C. Finlay

  • Article |

    The current distribution of crops around the world neither attains maximum production nor minimum water use, according to a crop water model and yield data. An optimized crop distribution could feed an additional 825 million people and substantially reduce water use.

    • Kyle Frankel Davis
    • , Maria Cristina Rulli
    •  & Paolo D’Odorico

  • Editorial |

    The world's inland waters are under siege. A system-level view of watersheds is needed to inform both our scientific understanding and management decisions for these precious resources.

  • Perspective |

    Many of the world's saline lakes have been shrinking due to consumptive water use. The Great Salt Lake, USA, provides an example for how the health of and ecosystem services provided by saline lakes can be sustained.

    • Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh
    • , Craig Miller
    •  & Johnnie Moore

  • News & Views |

    Debate rages over which water bodies in the US are protected under federal law by the Clean Water Act. Science shows that isolated wetlands and headwater systems provide essential downstream services, but convincing politicians is another matter.

    • Mark A. Ryan

  • Perspective |

    Enhanced protection is needed for freshwater bodies in the United States — in particular impermanent streams and wetlands outside floodplains — according to an assessment of their value and vulnerability.

    • Irena F. Creed
    • , Charles R. Lane
    •  & Lora Smith

  • Review Article |

    River deltas are shaped by interactions between fluvial and tidal processes. Tides act to stabilize delta morphology, but sediment depletion due to human activities disrupts the balance and leads to erosion and scour.

    • A. J. F. Hoitink
    • , Z. B. Wang
    •  & K. Kästner

  • News & Views |

    Groundwater resources are directly affected by climate variability via precipitation, evapotranspiration and recharge. Analyses of US and India trends reveal that climate-induced pumping indirectly influences groundwater depletion as well.

    • Jason J. Gurdak

  • Article |

    Soils have the capacity to store water at the land–atmosphere interface. Analysis of global satellite data suggests that significant precipitation can be retained by soils, leading to even less groundwater storage in water-starved regions.

    • Kaighin A. McColl
    • , Seyed Hamed Alemohammad
    •  & Dara Entekhabi

  • News & Views |

    Increasing groundwater extraction supports hundreds of millions of people across the Indo-Gangetic Basin. Data suggests that despite the increase in withdrawals, groundwater depletion is localized and the most widespread threat is contamination.

    • Scott Fendorf
    •  & Shawn G. Benner

  • Editorial |

    Groundwater flow meddles with hydrological, environmental and geological processes. As water scarcity issues mount for people living above ground, the vast stores of freshwater in the subsurface require research attention.

  • Commentary |

    Drought management is inefficient because feedbacks between drought and people are not fully understood. In this human-influenced era, we need to rethink the concept of drought to include the human role in mitigating and enhancing drought.

    • Anne F. Van Loon
    • , Tom Gleeson
    •  & Henny A. J. Van Lanen

  • Commentary |

    Since 1999, China's Grain for Green project has greatly increased the vegetation cover on the Loess Plateau. Now that erosion levels have returned to historic values, vegetation should be maintained but not expanded further as planned.

    • Yiping Chen
    • , Kaibo Wang
    •  & Xinhua He

  • Letter |

    The glaciers in western Canada are experiencing rapid mass loss. Projections of their fate with a model that couples physics-based ice dynamics with a surface mass balance model suggest that glacier volume will shrink by 70% by 2100.

    • Garry K. C. Clarke
    • , Alexander H. Jarosch
    •  & Brian Menounos

  • Commentary |

    Water availability and use are inherently regional concerns. However, a global-scale approach to evaluating strategies to reduce water stress can help maximize mitigation.

    • Yoshihide Wada
    • , Tom Gleeson
    •  & Laurent Esnault

  • News & Views |

    Southwest Australia has become increasingly dry over the past century. Simulations with a high-resolution global climate model show that this trend is linked to greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion — and that it is likely to continue.

    • David J. Karoly

  • Commentary |

    In areas of the developing world that have benefited only marginally from the intensification of agriculture, foreign investments can enhance productivity. This could represent a step towards greater food security, but only if we ensure that malnourished people in the host countries benefit.

    • Paolo D'Odorico
    •  & Maria Cristina Rulli

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