Freshwater resources

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.

​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.