Freshwater resources

A new study identifies a connected pattern of drought followed by heavy rain in regional hotspots around the globe.

As climate change and population growth make drinking water costlier, here are six strategies to quench the state’s thirst without busting its budget.

Stanford professor Alexandria Boehm and visiting scholar Krista Wigginton describe potential transmission pathways of COVID-19 and their implications.

Stanford researchers propose a new way to locate water leaks within the tangle of aging pipes found beneath many cities. The improvement could save time, money and billions of gallons of water.

New research maps impacts of hydropower dams on species critical to human livelihoods.

In regions that lack the resources to treat the contaminated water, it can lead to disease, cancer, and even death.

Stanford hydrologist Newsha Ajami, an appointee to California’s regional water quality board, discusses how wildfires affect water quality, and how we can better prepare for and react to the challenges.

A five-year project led by a Stanford professor will research and develop cost-competitive and energy-efficient technologies to desalinate nontraditional water sources for diverse end uses from agriculture to municipal drinking water.

Stanford researchers examine effective strategies to rising water scarcity concerns in the context of climate change.

An experiment with a water-saving “smart” faucet shows potential for reducing water use. The catch? Unbeknownst to study participants, the faucet’s smarts came from its human controller.

With new rules coming into effect, farmers and municipalities using groundwater must either find more water to support the aquifers or take cropland out of use. To ease the pain, engineers are looking to harness an unconventional and unwieldy source of water: the torrential storms that sometimes blast across the Pacific Ocean and soak California.

New research finds one drought can amplify or cause another. Decreased moisture recycling and transport impacts how droughts form and move across continents.

Stanford scientists and water experts met in Sacramento to discuss California water quality issues.

Measurements of suspended sediment concentrations reveal a lot about the health of a waterway, but until now such data has been difficult to obtain.

New research provides insight on intrusion of ocean saltwater into freshwater aquifers.

Overpumping in California’s Central Valley has depleted groundwater storage capacity and caused the land to sink. A new model based on remote sensing data could help zero in on where water managers can replenish aquifers by flooding fields.

An algorithm that reads satellite images can help environmental regulators identify potentially hazardous agricultural facilities more efficiently than traditional approaches.

In Jordan, one of the most water-poor nations, predictions of future droughts depend on the scale of climate change. Without reducing greenhouse gases the future looks dry, but researchers offer some hope.

A major component of climate change unknowns stems from interactions between changes in climate and changes in ecosystems. This episode of the "Know Your Planet" video series from Stanford Earth Matters looks at how plants shape weather patterns and influence climate.

Green power source or fish killer? As older dams around the West come up for relicensing, their owners know that they’ll have to spend heavily to fix problems, while new energy sources are getting cheaper.

A chemical engineer wants to make the term ‘wastewater’ obsolete by extracting usable chemicals to create fertilizers, disinfectants and more.

Two experts from Stanford’s Water in the West program explain the potential impacts on the future of water in California of the proposed plan to downsize the $17 billion Delta twin tunnels project.

Recent droughts caused increases in emissions of carbon dioxide and harmful air pollutants from power generation in several western states as fossil fuels came online to replace hampered hydroelectric power. A new study quantifies the impact.

New rules and new technology are giving farmers and managers a better look at groundwater supplies.