Achieving the energy transition will take money, minerals, land, water, and skilled labor. Will we have enough of each?

Filtering salt out of water is used in many parts of the world that deal with severe drought, but it can come with its own set of problems.

New study challenges many climate scientists’ expectations that plants will make much of the world wetter in the future.

In a new survey of the sub-seafloor off the U.S. Northeast coast, scientists have made a surprising discovery: a gigantic aquifer of relatively fresh water trapped in porous sediments lying below the salty ocean.

A new book, the second in a series of primers with the Earth Institute imprint, provides an interdisciplinary overview drought, bringing together many fields including climate science, hydrology and ecology.

Recent research indicates that salt is accumulating in the environment and poses an emerging threat both to ecosystems and human health.

In a new study, researchers have mapped out a large variety of discarded pharmaceuticals dissolved throughout the Hudson River. They say that in some places, levels may be high enough to potentially affect aquatic life.

We have been harming our hard-earned water resources; is it too late to clean up our act? With the help of the nine principles of ecology we can work towards effectively and sustainably managing these ecosystems, which will help us preserve the quality of New York’s freshwater resources and maintain our high quality drinking water.

“The world needs to awaken itself to the looming catastrophe of global warming,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, at a recent meeting in Muscat. “We must provide a safe operating space where vested interest and lobby-driven policies will not see the world marching into disaster.”

‘Peak ecological water’ is the point at which so much water is being diverted from the environment for human use, that the ecosystem can no longer function normally. It can even get to the point that an ecosystem is irreversibly damaged, and there are estimates that humans already divert almost 50% of all accessible freshwater globally. According to their article, “Since 1900, half of the world’s wetlands have disappeared. The number of freshwater species has decreased by 50% since 1970, faster than the decline of species on land or in the sea. River deltas are increasingly deprived of flows due to upstream diversions, or receive water heavily contaminated with human and industrial wastes.”