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Wet getting wetter and dry getting dryer, or global aridification? This Review examines the applicability and limits of both hypotheses across different frameworks, scales and contexts, providing insights on hydrologic change and the future of water availability.
Recent toxicological studies have indicated that the poorly characterized high-molecular-weight fraction of disinfection by-products may contribute more to toxicity than the carbon disinfection by-products of current research interest. This Review summarizes what is known about the high-molecular-weight fraction and suggests pathways for future research in this area.
Although more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, there is a dire lack of data on trade, cost, and origin of the food that the urban dwellers rely on. Understanding the impact of escalating water-food systems variability on urban quality of life is critical for designing data systems needed to implement appropriate policies and state-supported interventions in urban areas.
Examination of boil water alerts (BWAs) in Jackson, Mississippi points to the breadth and diversity of impact from water contamination. We describe these impacts and the larger context and limitations of BWAs as ways of both informing the public and mitigating risk.
This Perspective characterizes the major challenges to open-access water data in China. A potential data management infrastructure to improve the collection, sharing, and use of water data is outlined.
A cost-effective process to achieve defluorination of chlorinated per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) provides valuable insight for sustainable chemical design.
Drinking water treatment technologies are typically evaluated on the basis of narrow evaluation criteria, such as contaminant removal efficiency. This Perspective proposes additional user-centric criteria to evaluate the hidden and often gendered costs of water treatment technologies, including affordability, labour burden and user acceptance.
This Perspective reviews key water-related goals and progress achieved since the first UN Water Conference in Mar del Plata (1977) and highlights three priorities for the second UN Water Conference in New York (2023).
Iron-rich aquifers are commonly thought to be ‘arsenic-safe’ because of the strong sorption of arsenite and arsenate to iron (hydr)oxides. However, sulfate reduction can accelerate arsenic mobilization and increase arsenic mobility by formation of poorly sorbing thioarsenic species
Decentralized water treatment technologies could help in addressing global key water issues. This Perspective reviews the literature on the psychological determinants of acceptance, support and behaviour change related to decentralized water treatment technologies and proposes a user-focused theory of change to guide the promotion of these technologies.
Strategies for mitigating climate change driven floods in Shanghai apply regret theory to guide the best choice from alternate engineered flood control scenarios.
Water infrastructure improvements are needed in rural America. A series of county-level spatial econometric models showed positive economic development associated with water infrastructure spending in rural America. However, these benefits are unequally distributed among ethnoracial populations in interaction models.
Curtailing water use during drought is costly, but those costs are not evenly distributed. Socio–hydrological modelling shows how water burdens fall more heavily on poor households in response to water conservation policies.
The story of satellite gravimetry’s progression from the fringes of hydrology to being a staple of large-scale water cycle and water resources science and the sole source of global observations of terrestrial water storage now an ‘essential climate variable’.
Global groundwater resources are under strain, with cascading effects on producers, food and fibre production systems, communities and ecosystems. In this Perspective, the authors call for a major shift in research, extension and policy priorities to build polycentric governance capacity and strategic planning tools to sustain aquifer-dependent communities.
The way in which human society uses water is continuously evolving. The present challenges related to clean water availability require the development of sustainable technologies and infrastructure. Furthermore, a stronger and wider appreciation of water inequalities and injustice demand an adequate transformation of water governance at local and global scale. We have asked nine experts in various sectors of water-related research to share their views on how water and sanitation science, technology and governance must evolve to meet the requirements of a healthier relationship between water and society.
Recovering metals from wastewater and brine could augment metal stocks that are fundamental to modern technology. This Perspective assesses the potential of, and provides guidance for, recovering metals from wastewater and brine.
Development of the world’s hydropower is controversial because of its many documented environmental and societal implications. A global assessment of the unused profitable hydropower potential is performed with strict criteria to limit the environmental and social impact.
