The big groundwater crisis - food, water, pollution, and social unrest : John Cherry

John Cherry won the Stockholm Water Prize, known as the ‘Nobel’ of water, which is awarded in conjunction with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the same institution behind the Nobel Prize itself. He wrote the seminal Groundwater textbook that shaped our modern understanding of groundwater hydrology. He pioneered the field of groundwater contamination.

Lan Wang-Erlandsson is a researcher studying moisture recycling aka small water cycle. She focuses on the large-scale interactions between land, water, and climate, and their implications for social-ecological and Earth system resilience. She has conducted work on the planetary boundaries of green water, helped society understand moisture recycling as an ecosystem service, and collaborated with the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) on reports examining how moisture recycling intersects with the future of agriculture.For more info https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/planetary-tipping-points-of-green

Douglas Sheil is an ecologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He has worked on questions of how forests affect watersheds, how to restore and conserve forests, and also helped clarify explanations of the Biotic Pump. For more info https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/the-forest-water-connection-ecologist. You can help support this podcast by becoming a subscriber of the Climate Water Project newsletter.

Dr. van der Ent is a hydrologist who made a global map of the small water cycle, showing what percentage of the evapotranspiration turns back into rainfall on the same continent. For written article https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/making-the-map-of-the-small-water

A wonderful new documentary, Our Blue World, is out, and it offers a panoramic exploration of how communities across the globe are learning to live in greater harmony with water. The film highlights a wide range of innovative and traditional practices—from China’s sponge city initiative, to New Zealand’s recognition of the Whanganui River as a legal person, to the ancient Peruvian techniques for guiding water into mountains so it reemerges as springs. It also delves into the Biosphere 2 project, where twelve people lived in a sealed dome for two years and had to rely on constructed wetlands to purify their water. The documentary further explores the shift along the Mississippi River from a levee-centered approach to one that embraces wetland restoration, as well as efforts to restore Ireland’s bogs—offering a hopeful vision of how we can reimagine our relationship with water. The film is produced by Paul O’Callaghan, directed by Ruan Magan, and narrated by Liam Neeson (the action movie actor) in his voice that oozes gravitas. For more see https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/our-blue-world-documentary-paul-ocallaghan

Laura Norman is a physical scientist with the USGS. Doing hydrological modelling of slow water. https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/putting-rocks-in-rivers-to-lessen

The five principles of Natural Sequence Farming (NSF) are:1) Slow the Flow: Emphasizing the importance of slowing down water flow to allow infiltration into the soil.2) Let All Plants Grow: Promoting plant diversity and allowing natural regeneration of the landscape.3) Careful Where the Animals Go: Integrating livestock management with the natural sequence of the landscape.4) Filtration is a Must Know: Understanding the role of natural filtration systems in purifying water.5) Return to the Top to Recycle the Lot: Recycling nutrients and resources by returning waste products to the top of the soil.For more info https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/natural-sequence-farming-stuart-andrewsYou can support this podcast by becoming a paid subscriber of Climate Water Project newsletter.

Charlotte Qin in an artist of water. She paints the fluid flow of water in its different forms, and she does reciprocal performances about water, where she interacts with the audience, as they connect with the water. For more info https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/the-art-of-water-charlotte-qin . You can support this work by becoming a paid subscriber of the Climate Water Project newsletter.

In this interview, we talk about a wide range of topics in hydrology, including how plants drink water from the air in a process called foliar water uptake. Article is at https://climatewaterproject.substack.com/p/plants-drink-water-from-the-air-hydrologist

Rehydrating Los Angeles and its surrounding areas can help lessen fires. For more see climatewaterproject.substack.com