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Nature Water will publish papers covering all aspects of research that are connected to the evolving relationship between society and water resources. To face the challenges posed by climate change and increasing population, water research requires the integrated contribution of scientists from different disciplines, across the natural and social sciences and engineering. We aim to publish studies that can have an impact on fundamental understanding, on practical technological applications, and on the potential for policy implementation.
To illustrate the scope of the journal, the editors of Nature Water have prepared this Collection - extensive but not exhaustive - of primary research articles, published by journals in the Nature Portfolio over the past three years, grouped into the broad thematic areas that the journal will cover.
We hope you enjoy browsing through this Collection. To learn more about how to submit a manuscript to Nature Water, please visit our For Authors pages. You can also contact the editors of the journal at naturewater@nature.com for any question about the scope.
Water resources science and climate change effects
Groundwater model results and hydrologic data sets reveal that half of global groundwater fluxes may equilibrate with climate-driven recharge variations on human timescales, indicating that hydraulic memory may buffer climatic change impacts.
Many lakes that currently mix once or twice a year may become permanently stratified or mix only once in a warming climate, suggest numerical simulations of lake mixing regimes. Mixing regimes are most affected by ice-cover duration and surface temperatures.
A comprehensive assessment of the world’s rivers and their connectivity shows that only 37 per cent of rivers longer than 1,000 kilometres remain free-flowing over their entire length.
Glaciers in the high mountains of Asia provide a uniquely drought-resilient source of water, supplying summer meltwater sufficient for the basic needs of around 200 million people.
Analysis of a comprehensive European flood dataset reveals regional changes in river flood discharges in the past five decades that are consistent with models suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening.
Estimates for when critical environmental streamflow limits will be reached—with potentially devastating economic and environmental effects—are obtained using a global model that links groundwater pumping with the groundwater flow to rivers.
The worldwide distribution and water supply of water towers (snowy or glacierized mountain ranges) is indexed, showing that the most important water towers are also the most vulnerable to socio-economic and climate-change stresses, with huge potential negative impacts on populations downstream.
The authors here address water sustainability in the greater area of Beijing, China. Specifically, the positive effects towards Beijing groundwater levels via water diversion from the Yangtze River to the North are shown.
While ecological restoration has been promoted for curbing degradation and improving ecosystem health, the impacts on water flux and storage have been understudied. This article finds that large-scale restoration efforts can actually deplete terrestrial water storage, requiring more effort to balance ecosystem needs.
Validated barrier inventories and modelling indicate that Europe’s rivers are fragmented by more than one million barriers, such as dams, weirs and fords, causing major impacts on biodiversity.
Surface water availability will change under climate change and is impacted by feedbacks between the land and atmosphere. Soil moisture exerts a negative feedback on water availability in drylands, offsetting some of the expected decline.
The authors show how untreated wastewater laced with microplastics and raw sewage is routinely discharged into UK river flows that are too low to disperse the microplastics downstream. This discharge creates acute microplastic contamination of river beds that threatens biodiversity and the quality of riverine habitats.
Water constraints can affect plans to expand electricity capacity. This study shows that in the United States such constraints can increase the cost of electricity generation with slightly reduced electrification of end-use sectors, and can incentivize early retirement of water-intensive technologies.
The increasing demand for energy and clean water has become a grand global challenge. Here the authors develop a membrane-distillation device that exploits sunlight and the heat dissipated by an integrated solar cell unit, enabling simultaneous efficient production of electricity and drinkable water.
Agrivoltaics can achieve synergistic benefits by growing agricultural plants under raised solar panels. In this article, the authors showed that growth under solar panels reduced tomato and pepper drought stress and increased production, while simultaneously reducing photovoltaic panel heat stress.
By passively evaporating water from waste streams, evaporation ponds work with different waste streams but need large areas due to low evaporation rates. This study shows that a photo-thermal device converting sunlight into mid-infrared radiation could enhance evaporation and reduce land needs.
Solar-driven water evaporation technology still faces main challenges of limited efficiency and salt fouling. Here the authors achieve high energy efficiency and evaporation rate under high salinity through an energy reutilizing strategy based on interfacial water film inhomogeneity on a biomimetic structure.
Two-dimensional lamellar membranes for water purification are promising but suffer from swelling that reduces their ion sieving performance in water. This study reports easy-to-fabricate, non-swelling MXene membranes prepared by the intercalation of Al3+ ions that could be scalable.
Here the authors design an electrolysis reactor to generate H2O2 which could be further catalytically activated by Cu single atoms to yield hydroxyl radicals. Combining the two reactions enables a system that could treat organic wastewater, providing a path toward sustainable advanced oxidation processes.
There are big uncertainties in the contribution of irrigation to crop yields. Here, the authors use Bayesian model averaging to combine statistical and process-based models and quantify the contribution of irrigation for wheat and maize yields, finding that irrigation alone cannot close yield gaps for a large fraction of global rainfed agriculture.
Environmental impacts of water use affect the sustainability of food production. The impacts of water use associated with self-selected diets in the United States are estimated here based on the types and quantities of foods in the diet, the irrigation water required to produce those foods and the relative scarcity of water in the regions where that irrigation occurs. Food substitutions offer opportunities to reduce these water impacts.
Mapping of the global potential of atmospheric water harvesting using solar energy shows that it could provide safely managed drinking water for a billion people worldwide based on climate suitability.
Water consumption does not put a constant stress on available supplies, but is instead a function of flexibility in demands for food, water and energy. This analysis looks at 36 years of water consumption around the globe to identify basins under the most stress, and how they can lower their intensive uses.
Only about 15% of water cycle diagrams include human interaction with water, although human freshwater appropriation amounts to about half of global river discharge, according to an analysis of 464 water cycle diagrams and a synthesis of the global water cycle.
The impact on inadequate water quality on water scarcity is unclear. Here the authors quantify China’s present-day water scarcity and show that inadequate water quality exacerbates China’s water scarcity, which is unevenly distributed across the country.
Runoff from mountain water sources is critical to some lowland populations. In this Article, these populations are projected to increase from 0.2 billion people in the 1960s to 1.5 billion by mid-century.
Assessments of future virtual water trading are still lacking. Here the authors estimated the global virtual water trade throughout the century and found that virtual green water exports and virtual blue water exports at least triple to more than 3200 bcm and 170 bcm, respectively, by the end of the century.
Water use may be a topic of increased research, but water theft remains understudied. This paper utilizes insights from three international case studies to inform on the systemic failures that sustain water theft.
The impacts of water scarcity depend on physical basin characteristics and global economic dynamics. Here, the authors show scenario assumptions can yield either highly positive or negative economic impacts due to water scarcity, and the drivers of these impacts are basin-specific and cannot be determined a priori.
Proper water and sanitation access remains an issue for many in the United States. Here the authors estimate and map the full scope of water hardship, including both incomplete plumbing and water quality across the country.
This paper quantifies global urban water scarcity in 2016 and 2050 and explores potential solutions. One third to nearly half of the global urban population is projected to face water scarcity problems.
Ecosystems that provide fresh water for cities also impact sediment flows, flood mitigation and hydropower provision. This Article looks at over 300 cities globally to gauge the interactions of natural ecosystems with built infrastructure.
Increased abundance of antibiotic resistance genes in the environment may be due to selection pressure by residual antibiotics, or to contamination with resistant bacteria from human faeces. Here, Karkman et al. analyze metagenomic data and find evidence supporting the second scenario in most cases.
Obtaining data on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) from healthy human populations is difficult. Here, Hendriksen et al. use metagenomic analysis to obtain AMR data from untreated sewage from 79 sites in 60 countries, finding correlations with socio-economic, health and environmental factors.
Analyses show that the peak intensity of summertime phytoplankton blooms has increased in 71 large lakes globally over the past three decades, revealing a worldwide exacerbation of bloom conditions.
Substantial water savings can be achieved by coating toilet bowl surfaces to repel liquids, bacteria and viscoelastic solids such as human faeces. In this Article, the authors develop a sprayable, non-fouling coating that can reduce cleaning water consumption by ~90% compared with untreated surfaces.