14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most important things that we need to make sure of today is that our planet remains capable of supporting human life for the foreseeable future. Ensuring water supplies is the most important factor.
Surviving without the precious liquid is impossible for more than a few days, and yet we seem to be intent on wasting it in a variety of ways, that have little to do with human consumption.
To make matters even worst, millions of people in the world's poorest areas don't have access to supplies of freshwater, and suffer greatly on account of it.
At this point, burgeoning human needs come together with climate variability and change, and global warming, to produce an ensemble of factors that threatens the world's freshwater supply directly.
Despite the liquid being the main chemical that allowed for the existence of complex life on this planet, there are still many things we don't know about it availability, quality and dynamics, experts say.
As part of understanding the impacts that a changing climate and human activities have on Earth's water system, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently awarded new grants in the field.
The organization decided on the recipients of 17 grants, which are awarded through the NSF Water Sustainability and Climate (WSC) solicitation.
“We need to determine how our built water systems and our governance systems can be made more reliable, resilient, and sustainable,” explains official Tim Killeen.
“They must meet diverse and often conflicting needs, such as minimizing consumption of water for energy generation, industrial and agricultural production, and built environment requirements,” he adds.
The expert is the assistant director of the Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) at the NSF. “The results will advance our understanding of Earth's water resources and with it, our predictive capability not only for the availability of water, but for the future of life on our planet,” he adds.
The Directorate for Engineering, the Directorate for Biological Sciences, and the Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences at the NSF are also involved in supporting the DWSC solicitations.
Hopefully, after these newly-accepted studies are completed, scientists will have a better understanding of how the planet's water system interacts with global warming, land use, ecosystems, and the built environment.