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By Monika Freyman, water program manager at Ceres Proposed standards that the U.S. Department of Interior announced last week for hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) on federal and Indian lands are hugely important, especially in the arid West where water is gold. Unfortunately, water protection gets short shrift in the rules that, once finalized, will apply to…
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Last week, scientists published a study in the journal PNAS that warned that deforestation in the Amazon could significantly decrease the power output of hydroelectric dams, which are a major source of energy in the region. The study noted that although removal of trees tends to increase the amount of water that runs off the land, and…
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At a fish-rearing facility near Michigan‘s Kalamazoo River, I’m peering inside a big, water-filled tub at lake sturgeon eggs no bigger than BB pellets. Someday these will grow into the biggest fish in North America, but for now, they’re the precious cargo of a state program to bring these freshwater giants back to their native…
I lived in Michigan as a child, and I spent many summer nights gazing at the dark sky. I also spent many happy hours making sand castles on the edges of the Great Lakes. In winter, I spent hours romping in the ample snow. Lisa Borre is also from Michigan originally, and she has been…
By Kelli Barrett, Ecosystem Marketplace In East China’s Fujian Province, the booming economy has been good to the cities of Sanming and Nanping, as well as to farmers in the surrounding hills. That, however, has been bad news for the Min River and to the downstream city of Fuzhou, which gets its water from…
A new program is asking craft breweries to support the Clean Water Act by reducing their water use and recycling wastewater.
South African Anti-Fracking Activist Calls for Global Alliance
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on May 13, 2013 
“We’ve got to stop doing this,” said Jonathan Deal, with a sense of urgency tinged with discomfort. Deal could well have been talking about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the oil and gas drilling practice he has tirelessly fought to stop in his native South Africa. But at this moment, he was talking about the energy-guzzling…
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Posted by Kate Voss, UCCHM Water Policy Fellow. This is the fourth in a series of posts on our Water Diplomacy trip to Israel, Jordan, and Palestine inspired by our paper on ‘Groundwater Depletion in the Middle East.’ Other posts in the series: 1) Middle East Lost a Dead Sea Amount of Water in 7…
Bass fishing in the American Southeast may have just gotten a little bit more complicated. According to a release filed this week, biologists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) would like to name a new species of black bass, the Choctaw bass, or Micropterus haiaka. In 2007, FWC scientists found an unusual DNA…
Once a Smelly Nuisance, Mexicali’s Wastewater Now Brings Life to the Colorado Delta
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on May 9, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. If there is one place that transforms wastewater from trouble-maker to life-saver it’s the site of Las Arenitas sewage treatment plant in the Mexican state of Baja California. There, nasty urban wastewater that once made a smelly health hazard of the New River near…
Tapped Out: How Will Cities Secure Their Water Future?
Posted by Brian Richter of The Nature Conservancy and University of Virginia in Water Currents on May 8, 2013 
Today, global demands for food, energy, and shelter are putting unprecedented pressure on the resources of the planet. Water is at the heart of this crisis. In fact, more than half of the world’s cities are already experiencing water shortages on a recurring basis – based on findings from a study that I published, along…
New Zealand’s large, slow-growing longfin eels (Anguilla dieffenbachia) are on a “slow path to extinction,” according to an April report by the parliamentary commissioner for the environment. The commissioner has now been joined by a number of scientists in calling for a ban on fishing of the eels, since their numbers have been declining in…
As Oil and Gas Drilling Competes for Water, One New Mexico County Says No
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on May 2, 2013 
In drought-plagued New Mexico, water is gold. And this week, Mora County in the northern part of the state took a firm stand to protect its precious liquid: it banned all oil and gas extraction from county lands. It is believed to be the first county in the nation to take such action. Big oil…
I recently attended the award ceremony for the 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize winners in Washington, D.C. Six people, one from each of the inhabited continents of the planet, was honored for their tireless conservation work. I have followed the Goldman awards since my days at E Magazine, and each year I am inspired and uplifted…
In January, we posted a “dreamlapse” video made in Death Valley by Sunchaser Pictures. Some 9,600 Facebook users clicked the “like” button. Today, I received notice from Sunchaser’s Gavin Heffernan that part 2 has just been released (view above). In an email, Heffernan wrote: “This time our timelapse adventure took place at the infamous sliding…
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Threats to the Amazon come not only from deforestation, but also from dams, roads, human-induced climate change, gold mining, petroleum extraction, shipping and the unplanned growth of cities, whose expanding populations consume more and more of the Amazon River’s resources.
The northern map turtle (Graptemys geographica) is a relatively large aquatic turtle that is native to North America. It is named for the lines on its shell, which resemble the contour lines on a map. Map turtles show extreme sexual size dimorphism, which means the genders grow to different sizes. Northern male map turtles…
Locals Help Restore the Colorado Delta
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 24, 2013 This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. The Colorado River Delta once boasted a million acres of lush cattail marshes and riverside forests of cottonwoods and willows. But today, due to dams and diversions upstream, the river rarely flows through its delta anymore, and only ten percent of that verdant…
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Seeing the photos from the record-breaking algal bloom on Lake Erie in 2011 was like déjà vu for me. I grew up in the Great Lakes region in the 1960s and 1970s and remember the days when Lake Erie was declared “dead.” I later learned that the green scum that plagued the lake during summer…
Bringing New Life to the Colorado Delta’s Fisheries
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 23, 2013 This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. The Colorado River sustains more than 30 million people and vast areas of farmland. But with no flow reaching the delta and the sea in most years, those last in line for the river in Mexico are suffering. For the fishing town of…
Water Currents’ own Sandra Postel, National Geographic’s Freshwater Fellow, will be talking live with the public today at 2 p.m. Eastern time on a special Google Hangout for Earth Week. The conversation, Clean Water For All, is being hosted by Whole World Water and is moderated by Billy Wilson. Sandra will be joined by David de…
A Water Bank Helps Revive Colorado Delta Willows and Wetlands
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 23, 2013 
This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. In the delta community of Miguel Alemán, situated along the Colorado River corridor that forms the border between Mexico and Arizona, we arrive at an unlikely enterprise in this parched environment: a tree nursery. A few thousand cuttings of willow, mesquite, and cottonwoods…
Returning the Colorado River to the Sea
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on April 22, 2013 This post is part of a series on the Colorado River Delta. Once teeming with life and spanning some two million acres, the delta of the Colorado River ranked among the planet’s greatest desert deltas. But more than half a century of damming and diverting the river’s flow to supply the burgeoning farms and cities…
An iconic freshwater fish of tropical South America, the arapaima is a massive, slender beast that can grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) long and weigh 440 pounds (200 kilograms). It is known as the pirarucu in Brazil and the paiche in the western Amazon, and is one of the largest freshwater fish in…
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It is a river that goes by many names – Red. Grand River Red. The Canyon Maker. And today it is the Most Endangered River in the country. American Rivers released our annual America’s Most Endangered Rivers report today, listing the Colorado River at #1 because demand for water is outstripping supply. Outdated water management…
