Freshwater resources

​In addition to reusing water, we'll have to augment the supply from reservoirs with recycling, stormwater capture, desalination and other strategies.

Cash-strapped environmental regulators have a powerful and cheap new weapon. Machine learning methods could more than double the number of violations detected, according to Stanford researchers.

Diversity reigns when water gets scarce. New research suggests the most resilient forests are made up of trees that have a wider variety of rates for water moving up from the soil.

Driven by public pressure, governments and corporations are considering eliminating or phasing out single-use plastics such as straws. Stanford experts discuss the limitations of these bans and the potential for meaningful change.

Stanford researchers map out groundwater at stake in the wake of a court decision that bolsters Native American rights to the precious resource across an increasingly arid West.

Natural sources of the toxic form of chromium appear in wells that provide drinking water to a large population in California, offering a new perspective on California’s groundwater management challenges.

Strawberries grown for export have become so valuable, farmers keep trying to grow more, and are allowed to use more groundwater than nature replenishes.

The system could one day be adapted into solar-powered water purification stations for use in developing regions where fresh water is a precious commodity.

Pumping an aquifer to the last drop squeezes out more than water. A Stanford study finds it can also unlock dangerous arsenic from buried clays – and reveals how sinking land can provide an early warning and measure of contamination.

A wastewater treatment plant under construction in Redwood Shores will be the largest to test a technology that significantly reduces the cost of cleaning water. The key: bacteria that eschew oxygen while producing burnable methane.

In order to meet the California’s future water needs, researchers propose a cap and trade approach to water conservation based on local supply and demand realities.

The satellite and supercomputer are the rock hammer and compass of modern geoscientists whose research spans the gamut from climate change projections and earthquake simulations to energy resources optimization.

With a new web-scraping and search algorithm and real water utility data, Stanford researchers have shown a relationship between media coverage of the recent historic California drought and household water savings.

A new web portal puts four years of California drought data into an interactive format, showing where regions met or missed water conservation goals. The idea is to motivate awareness and conservation.

A new analysis of regional drought and land-use changes in Syria suggests water conditions in downstream Jordan could get significantly worse.

Stanford environmental engineers have developed a planning tool called AquaCharge that helps urban water utilities develop efficient, cost-effective systems to replenish aquifers.

Excess nutrient pollution to U.S. waterways increases the likelihood of events that severely impair water quality. 

Stanford Earth’s Rosemary Knight recently spearheaded a project to map underground freshwater resources and forecast the intrusion of saltwater into aquifers beneath the California coastal town of Marina.

Studying how and why bridges have collapsed in the past identifies the limitation of current risk assessment approach and demonstrates the value of new perspectives on climate change impact.

Over-pumping groundwater has drastically and permanently reduced the water storage capabilities of land in one of California’s most important farming areas.

Stanford climatologist Noah Diffenbaugh explains why heavy rains during a drought are to be expected for a state in the throes of climate change.

Scientists use Earth-imaging technologies to study the intrusion of saltwater into freshwater aquifers along the California coast.