Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Logo

GC-Future Water

Post GC-Future Water

U.S. Department of Energy Announces Project Selections to Build Water Security and Climate Resilience

December 1, 2022

This article first appeared at https://www.nawihub.org/. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) today announced the selection of seven projects that will advance breakthrough technologies for reliable and affordable freshwater supplies for the United States. The selected projects will conduct early-stage applied research on desalination and treatment of…

Read More
Post Energy Geosciences Division GC-Future Water Resilient Energy Water Infrastructure

NAWI Publishes Trailblazing Roadmap Series on Innovation for a Sustainable Water Future

August 25, 2021

For the American West, this summer served up reminder after stark reminder of the urgent need to address the country’s water security. The drying up of the Southwest’s most important river–the Colorado River which is the source of water for one in 10 Americans–is more than enough to sound the alarm. But far worse: As…

Read More
Post Energy Geosciences Division GC-Future Water Resilient Energy Water Infrastructure

Could the Answer to Groundwater Resources Come From High in the Sky?

June 19, 2020

Groundwater makes up 30 to 50 percent of California’s water supply, but until recently there were few restrictions placed on its retrieval. Then in 2014 California became the last Western state to require regulation of its groundwater. With deadlines starting this year, for the first time water managers in the nation’s premier agricultural region – the…

Read More
Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division GC-Future Water

Watershed project expert spells out impact of climate change on mountains in new IPCC report

October 3, 2019

East River, Colorado

Ecologist Heidi Steltzer, a Fort Lewis College professor and member of the Department of Energy’s Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area (SFA) project led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, studies how reduced snowpack and earlier snowmelt caused by climate change impact water supply in high-mountain areas. She is a lead author of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.

Read More
Post Energy Geosciences Division Environmental Remediation & Water Resources Program GC-Future Water

How groundwater management activities can affect water quantity and quality

October 2, 2019

Peter Nico has co-authored a new working paper outlining how groundwater management activities can affect not only the quantity but also the quality of groundwater with a team of water-quality experts led by the Environmental Defense Fund. Nico is an environmental biogeochemist and program domain lead for Berkeley Lab’s Resilient Energy, Water and Infrastructure Program. …

Read More
Post GC-Future Water

Can We Reuse Polluted Water? Yes, Add Bacteria

July 30, 2019

Drilling a single oil or natural gas well with hydraulic fracturing requires between 1.5 to 16 million gallons of water. When the well starts flowing, the fluid that is brought back to the surface alongside the oil and gas is a combination of the injection fluid and brine from aquifers – a difficult-to-treat mixture known as…

Read More
Post GC-Future Water

ExaSheds: Advancing Watershed System Understanding through Exascale Simulation and Machine Learning

July 29, 2019

East River watershed, Colorado CA

As world population grows, so do concerns that water availability and water quality will continue to diminish. Changes in land use, climate change, and extreme weather exacerbate these concerns, which threaten not only our fresh water supply but also systems that rely on watershed exports, such as hydropower and agriculture. Although watersheds are recognized as…

Read More
Post GC-Future Water

To Pump or Not to Pump: New Tool Will Help Water Managers Make Smarter Decisions

June 26, 2019

Berkeley Lab scientists (from left) Deborah Agarwal, Juliane Mueller, Reetik Sahu, Bhavna Arora, and Charuleka Varadharajan are developing a computational tool for smarter groundwater management. (Credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab) The overpumping of groundwater in California has led to near environmental catastrophe in some areas – land is sinking, seawater is intruding, and groundwater storage capacity…

Read More
Post GC-Future Water

Workshop Explored Role of Data in Solving Hydrologic Problems

June 5, 2019

Zexuan Xu

A recent workshop held at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science focused on how to apply hydrologic transport data skills to real-world hydrologic problems. Zexuan Xu, an EESA postdoctoral fellow, coordinated the May event, “Critical Timescales of Hydrologic Transport.” Zexuan is currently working as part of a team of researchers studying ecosystem changes in a…

Read More