Sandra Postel
of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative
www.nationalgeographic.com/field/explorers/sandra-postel/ · newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/author/spostel/
A River in New Zealand Gets a Legal Voice
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on September 4, 2012 
It speaks the language of riffles and babbles, not legal rights and codes, but the Whanganui River, New Zealand’s third largest, has received something no other river in the country – and possibly the world – yet has: a legal voice. In a framework agreement signed last week between the Crown and the Whanganui…
An Aquatic Surprise at BioBlitz 2012
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on August 26, 2012 Ecologist Evan Thomas of the University of Colorado looked for a decade for a green algae called Volvox. At this year’s BioBlitz, surrounded by volunteers eager to catalog the water bugs of Lily Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, he found it! I asked Evan to explain his find. Sandra Postel is director of the…
Counting Water Bugs for Rocky Mountain BioBlitz
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on August 25, 2012 Tiny bugs called macro-invertebrates help make freshwater ecosystems tick, and as a team of volunteers found out at Lily Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, they’re diverse, abundant and just plain cool little creatures. Rachel Harrington, a freshwater ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, led the BioBlitz volunteers in identifying the water…
Our Oversized Groundwater Footprint
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on August 13, 2012 
We don’t see it, smell it or hear it, but the tragedy unfolding underground is nonetheless real – and it spells big trouble. I’m talking about the depletion of groundwater, the stores of H2O contained in geologic formations called aquifers, which billions of people depend upon to supply their drinking water and grow their food.…
That Sinking Feeling About Groundwater in Texas
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on July 19, 2012 
In case we need another example of the disturbing ramifications of extreme drought for our future water security, we can look to recent news out of northwest Texas. The High Plains Water District, based in Lubbock, recently reported that the 2011-12 drought drove groundwater levels in its sixteen-county service area to drop an average of…
Drip Irrigation Expanding Worldwide
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on June 25, 2012 
As the world population climbs and water stress spreads around the globe, finding ways of getting more crop per drop to meet our food needs is among the most urgent of challenges. One answer to this call is drip irrigation, which delivers water directly to the roots of plants in just the right amounts. It…
Fire, Drought, and Water Stress
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on June 4, 2012 
Smoke is in the air here in the middle Rio Grande Valley, as winds push charred particulates northeast from the largest fire in New Mexico’s recorded history. The Whitewater-Baldy blaze has now burned more than 350 square miles of the Gila National Forest and Gila Wilderness, a rugged gem of a landscape and the headwaters…
The Endangered Waters Beneath Our Feet
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on May 22, 2012 
Last week, the conservation organization American Rivers released its annual list of the nation’s most-endangered rivers. I got to thinking, what if we had a sister list of most-endangered aquifers? After all, water from underground meets 20 percent of U.S. water demand for drinking, crop irrigation and everything else. It also provides the…
The Power of a Radically Affordable Irrigation Pump
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 18, 2012 
One of the more transformative technologies ever developed for the world’s poor farmers is a water-lifting device called a treadle pump. It looks and operates much like a Stairmaster exercise machine that you’d find in a gym. But the dollar-a-day farmers who use these devices are not trying to lose pounds; they’re trying to…
Will Modern Phoenix Outlast the Prehistorical Hohokam?
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 4, 2012 
Darell Duppa, a late nineteenth century pioneer of the American Southwest, may barely warrant a historical footnote, but he left one memorable legacy: he named the capital city of the state of Arizona. With a classical education and five languages under his belt, Duppa was no typical Western pioneer. He drank and gambled,…
Reflections on a Thirsty Planet for World Water Day
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on March 22, 2012 
Water, I have learned, means different things to different people. To the novelist D. H. Lawrence, water was mysterious. It is “hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing, that makes it water and nobody knows what that is.” To the anthropologist Loren Eiseley, water was supernatural: “If there is…
From Texas to India to the Horn of Africa, Concern about Weather, Water, and Crops
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on March 6, 2012 
Hardly a week goes by without new reasons to be concerned about the impact of changing precipitation patterns and mounting water stress on food production. This past week, officials in Texas cut off irrigation water to rice farmers downstream of reservoirs depleted by the worst one-year drought in Texas history. Even with recent rains,…
Humanity’s Growing Impact on the World’s Freshwater
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on February 17, 2012 
As the human population has climbed past seven billion, and the consumption per person of everything from burgers to blue jeans has risen inexorably, the finiteness of Earth’s freshwater is becoming ever more apparent. It takes water to make everything, and the explosion of demand for all manner of products is draining rivers, shrinking…
Water for Chocolate – A Valentine’s Day Quiz
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on February 14, 2012 
It’s dark, sweet, and a Valentine’s treat. Since today’s the big day we decided to tweet On a question about chocolate… So straighten up in your seat. Which river basins grow the cocoa beans to make those scrumptious little things? I’ll offer a tiny hint, so you don’t have to cheat: One of them contains…
Texas Water District Acts to Slow Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on February 7, 2012 
A group of farmers in northwest Texas began 2012 under circumstances their forbearers could scarcely imagine: they faced a limit on the amount of groundwater they could pump from their own wells on their own property. The new rule issued by the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District, based in Lubbock, declares that water pumped…
“Sewer Mining” – Efficient Water Recycling Coming to a Community Near You
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on January 16, 2012 
It sounds yucky at best, but mining sewage is growing in popularity, especially in Sydney, Australia, where a decade of drought forced some creative thinking about how to get, use and manage water. In 2004, when reservoir levels around Sydney hit record lows during the Big Dry, Sydney Water, the municipal water provider, tightened…
The Water Costs of the Choices We Make
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on December 22, 2011 
In the crush of advertising from Black Friday to Super Saturday, all geared toward revving up our holiday buying, one ad stood out like an oasis in the desert. It was a full-page spread in the New York Times from Patagonia, the California-based retailer of outdoor apparel, and it was repeated online on Cyber…
Australia’s Grand Water Experiment – Take Two
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on November 28, 2011 
Australia’s iconic Murray River, beloved for the red gum forests that line its banks and the prized Murray cod that ply its waters, is suffering big time from the high demands placed upon its finite flows and the decade of dryness that presaged the climate disruption to come. Today, Australia’s Murray Darling Basin Authority…
Keystone XL, Clean Water and Democracy
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on November 16, 2011 
Bravo for Nebraskans. In today’s economy, job creation trumps just about everything. But for Nebraskans, at least one thing ranks higher – and that’s protecting their precious water sources. They know, as we all should, that ample clean water is crucial for economic vitality now and for generations to come. Nebraska’s citizens and representatives rose…
In Remembrance of Wangari Maathai
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on October 15, 2011 
Anyone who had the privilege of meeting Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai knows that a good dose of the inspiration she so generously imparted emanated from her amazing smile. As courageous as she was warm, Maathai stood tall and strong in the face of incredible adversity in her Kenyan homeland, just as she hoped the…
Still Wild and Free, New Mexico’s Gila River is Again Under Threat
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on September 27, 2011 
In today’s world where most rivers are turned on and off like plumbing works, the Gila in southwestern New Mexico is a rare gem: one of the few remaining undammed rivers in the United States and the only one in New Mexico. The Gila (pronounced Heela) spotlights what a river can be when it flows…
Fire and Rain: The One-Two Punch of Flooding After Blazes
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on August 31, 2011 
The great balls of fire that leapt from treetop to treetop in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico earlier this summer, threatening the town of Los Alamos and a federal nuclear research laboratory, were apocalyptic enough. They left behind a scorched landscape of dead trees, charred woods and blackened earth. From June 26 until…
Conservation in San Antonio is Saving More than Water
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on July 14, 2011 
Who would believe that a translucent blind salamander that dwells only in dark underground caves could force a big Texas city to not only slash its water use but make water waste illegal?
But the four-inch amphibian did pretty much just that – and that’s the crux of an unusual water story in San Antonio, where impressive conservation efforts are now being tested by one of the worst droughts in memory.
The Water Legacy of Kader Asmal Flows Far Beyond South Africa
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on June 29, 2011 
Reflections on South Africa’s former Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, who died on June 22 at the age of 76.
New U.S. Water Rules in the Making – A Once-in-a-Generation Opportunity to Fix Past Mistakes
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on June 15, 2011 
Due to all the fertilizer-laden floodwaters washed into the Gulf this spring, scientists are expecting this summer’s dead zone to measure between 8,500 and 9,421 square miles — an area roughly the size of New Hampshire.
