Global4
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National Geographic Water Issue speaks volumes
To celebrate World Water Day this year, the National Geographic Magazine gave us a lovely gift. They produced a Special Issue on Water – one whole 200+ page issue of engaging articles, and of course photographs. Oh, the photographs. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this issue alone is an Encyclopedia of…
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Water Footprinting – My Water Footprint
As an employee of the Columbia Water Center as well as a student studying Earth and Environmental Engineering (and focusing specifically on water resources), I consider myself a fairly water conscientious person. I take fast showers, turn off the sink when brushing my teeth, and drink primarily tap water to reduce my water footprint. However,…
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Creating a Sustainable Water Future
The concept of sustainable development encompasses not only environmental sustainability, but also economic sustainability, and sociopolitical sustainability. There may be no bigger an issue when taking into account the three aspects of sustainable development than the issue of global water scarcity and the growing gap between water supply and demand. Water is arguably our most…
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LAUNCH Water Sustainability Forum report from Tobias Siegfried
LAUNCH is a new initiative founded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), USAID, US State Dept, and NIKE to identify and support innovative work with great potential to contribute to sustainable solutions for many of the current environmental challenges. The organization will coordinate a series of forums which bring together scientists, academics, policy…
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Nitrogen and Wastewater: Kartik Chandran interview Part 2
Part 2 of CWC interview with research scientist Kartik Chandran: Nitrogen in wastewater removal and technology development. “As part of the nitrous oxide research program we are also coming up with process designs that remove nitrogen from both the liquid and gaseous space. Not one against the other. This is actually going into place all…
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Microbial Drug Resistance: Interview with Kartik Chandran, Part 1
Kartik Chandran, an Assistant Professor at the Columbia University Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering and the Director of CUBES, spoke to CWC about microbial drug resistance and nitrogen in wastewater treatment, and its relationship with climate change.
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Worldwide Drinking Water and Sanitation: New WHO/UNICEF report
WHO/UNICEF has released a new report that describes the status and trends with regard to safe drinking-water and basic sanitation worldwide, and progress made towards the Millennium Development Goals drinking-water and sanitation target.
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Simplify, Simplify: CWC Seminar on predicting the affects of climate change
Columbia Water Center Seminar Series: Murugesu Sivapalan says, “Simplify, simplify” and offers a ‘back-of-the-envelope’ method of predicting the affects of climate change on water basins.
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UK report on oceanic geoengineering study
New research from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, Southampton shows that plans to pump nutrient-rich water up from the deep ocean in order the boost algae growth at the surface to absorb CO2 would likely only sequester a small amount of total anthropogenic carbon emissions, and if the system was stopped could lead to rapid…