Post Carbon Fellow Sandra Postel’s participation in the Mayo Science Week, Clean Water 2040 was reported in the Mayo Advertiser. From the article: As part of Mayo Science Week, Clean Water 2040 is a half-day conference addressing the key...
Despite growing concern over the last two decades about the low-oxygen “dead zone” that emerges each summer in the fisheries-rich Gulf of Mexico, the nitrate pollution at the root of the problem continues to rise. That’s the upshot of...
The Gila River in southwestern New Mexico is an ecological gem, but is threatened by a proposed diversion. Photo by Sandra Postel The western United States was settled with the help of big dams and river diversions that delivered...
In nearly 1 in 10 U.S. watersheds, water use exceeds the natural water supply. Water stress worsens as colors trend from green to yellow to orange to red. Map courtesy of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental...
In the pantheon of river conservationists, few may leave a legacy larger than that of Roger Muggli, a third-generation farmer in eastern Montana. Thanks to his decades of efforts to help fish safely pass 12 Mile Dam, an irrigation...
Sandra Postel views the world through a water lens, advocating for all to make simple and easy changes to their everyday lives that will help “Change the Course” of the Earth’s precious supply of freshwater.
A solar-powered drip irrigation system waters vegetable crops in northern Benin. Photo by Jennifer A. Burney For millions of poor farm families in sub-Saharan Africa, access to water makes the difference between hunger and a full belly, between...
When we flip on a light, we rarely think about water. But electricity generation is the biggest user of water in the United States. Thermoelectric power plants alone use more than 200 billion gallons of water a day – about...
The Aral Sea in Central Asia, in 1989 (L) and 2008 (R). Images courtesy of NASA. The most devastated ecosystem I’ve ever seen is the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Once the world’s fourth largest lake, the Aral spanned an area...
At least one aspect of fracking’s risks to drinking water became a little clearer this week. A study led by Rob Jackson of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,...