State of the Planet

News from the Columbia Climate School

water matters33

  • How to Clean up the Gulf Coastline after the Oil Spill – EPA Workshop

    On June 5th, Columbia Water Center collaborator Ponisseril Somasundaran, an Engineering professor at Columbia University, participated in a workshop organized by the EPA on how to best address the environmental recovery of the Gulf Coast shoreline after the disastrous oil spill. At a later date we will post a conversation with Prof. Somasundaran about the…

  • Who owns the Nile?

    Who owns the Nile? Nine countries want to have a say in answering that question, and they don’t agree. The great river moves through Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, so they all may claim her as at least partly their own.

  • Applied Climate Research: A Conversation with Stefan Sobolowski (Part 2)

    In part 1 of this interview, I talked with Columbia Water Center hydroclimatologist Stefan Sobolowski about the effects of continental snowcover on climate, and the implications of his research on climate change. In part 2, we talk about the problem of uncertainty in climate prediction models, extreme weather events, the regional variation of climate change…

  • Peak Ecological Water

    ‘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…

  • Concord Bans Bottled Water

    Concord, Massachusetts is famous for the fact that Thoreau lived there at Walden Pond in the 1800s. But today, the environmentally conscious town is gaining more and more press as the first town in the United States to ban the sale of bottled water. bottledwaterAn 82-year-old woman named Jean Hill orchestrated the ban, and it…

  • Event: Himalayan Glaciers and Asia’s Looming Water Crisis

    Event: Himalayan Glaciers and Asia’s Looming Water Crisis

    Columbia Water Center, The Asia Society and The Economist are cosponsoring the event Himalayan Glaciers and Asia’s Looming Water Crisis, Wednesday July 14, 2010, 6:30pm at the Asia Society.

  • A Visit to Gowanus

    I recently took a trip to the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn to visit its infamously polluted (and smelly) canal. After decades of controversy, the Environmental Protection Agency recently named the canal as a Superfund site—one of the few such designations in an inner-urban area. In its report, the EPA found that the Gowanus Canal “has…

  • Asian Carp, Aquatic Interlopers Threaten the Great Lakes

    While the nation and the world morns the destruction of marine habitat and the deaths of an untold number of animals, birds, fish, and tiny organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, another battle is being waged, one in which people are desperately trying to find a way to eliminate one type of fish in an…

  • The Permaculture Approach to Water

    Permaculture has many facets, but one of the most exciting is its approach to water. Permaculture designers believe that through intelligent landscape design, it is frequently possible to go beyond conservation of water to actually recharge groundwater supplies.

  • How to Clean up the Gulf Coastline after the Oil Spill – EPA Workshop

    On June 5th, Columbia Water Center collaborator Ponisseril Somasundaran, an Engineering professor at Columbia University, participated in a workshop organized by the EPA on how to best address the environmental recovery of the Gulf Coast shoreline after the disastrous oil spill. At a later date we will post a conversation with Prof. Somasundaran about the…

  • Who owns the Nile?

    Who owns the Nile? Nine countries want to have a say in answering that question, and they don’t agree. The great river moves through Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, so they all may claim her as at least partly their own.

  • Applied Climate Research: A Conversation with Stefan Sobolowski (Part 2)

    In part 1 of this interview, I talked with Columbia Water Center hydroclimatologist Stefan Sobolowski about the effects of continental snowcover on climate, and the implications of his research on climate change. In part 2, we talk about the problem of uncertainty in climate prediction models, extreme weather events, the regional variation of climate change…

  • Peak Ecological Water

    ‘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…

  • Concord Bans Bottled Water

    Concord, Massachusetts is famous for the fact that Thoreau lived there at Walden Pond in the 1800s. But today, the environmentally conscious town is gaining more and more press as the first town in the United States to ban the sale of bottled water. bottledwaterAn 82-year-old woman named Jean Hill orchestrated the ban, and it…

  • Event: Himalayan Glaciers and Asia’s Looming Water Crisis

    Event: Himalayan Glaciers and Asia’s Looming Water Crisis

    Columbia Water Center, The Asia Society and The Economist are cosponsoring the event Himalayan Glaciers and Asia’s Looming Water Crisis, Wednesday July 14, 2010, 6:30pm at the Asia Society.

  • A Visit to Gowanus

    I recently took a trip to the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn to visit its infamously polluted (and smelly) canal. After decades of controversy, the Environmental Protection Agency recently named the canal as a Superfund site—one of the few such designations in an inner-urban area. In its report, the EPA found that the Gowanus Canal “has…

  • Asian Carp, Aquatic Interlopers Threaten the Great Lakes

    While the nation and the world morns the destruction of marine habitat and the deaths of an untold number of animals, birds, fish, and tiny organisms in the Gulf of Mexico, another battle is being waged, one in which people are desperately trying to find a way to eliminate one type of fish in an…

  • The Permaculture Approach to Water

    Permaculture has many facets, but one of the most exciting is its approach to water. Permaculture designers believe that through intelligent landscape design, it is frequently possible to go beyond conservation of water to actually recharge groundwater supplies.