Water resources articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The study shows that India’s agricultural subsidies have driven significant groundwater depletion by incentivizing overproduction of water-intensive crops like rice and wheat. This impact is evident in both Punjab’s alluvial aquifers and Madhya Pradesh’s hard rock aquifers.

    • Shoumitro Chatterjee
    • , Rohit Lamba
    •  & Esha D. Zaveri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This research explores the emergence and resolution of water scarcity. The results indicate that water scarcity is likely to become predominant in Africa by 2090. Conversely, China might experience alleviation from water scarcity post-2050, attributed to its declining population.

    • Junguo Liu
    • , Delong Li
    •  & Philippe Ciais

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A statistical mechanics approach unveils how urban layout influences flood hazards linking flood risk to factors like ground slope, porosity, building arrangement symmetry, and chord length, offering a scalable model applicable worldwide.

    • Sarah K. Balaian
    • , Brett F. Sanders
    •  & Mohammad Javad Abdolhosseini Qomi

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    The growing number of threats facing continental-scale transboundary water treaties warrants contemporary evaluation of not only the political and climatological conditions under which they were constructed, but also of how different management strategies for accommodating changes in those conditions can lead to treaty success or failure. We assess these threats by highlighting key attributes and vulnerabilities of water treaties across North America that frame a diverse set of future water management priorities. While these threats are ubiquitous globally, they are particularly pronounced in North America where water-abundant basins along the border between the United States (US) and Canada contrast with arid basins along the border between the US and Mexico. We propose addressing these needs through a three-step call to action for management agencies, politicians, and the public at large to embrace a holistic perspective on transboundary water agreements.

    • Andrew Gronewold
    • , Jenna Bednar
    •  & Jon Allan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Current desalination technologies are energy intensive and suffer from membrane degradation and fouling. Here, authors propose and explore the potential of thermodiffusion as a means of membrane-free, single-phase thermal desalination. A pathway towards a feasible thermodiffusive desalination is provided.

    • Shuqi Xu
    • , Alice J. Hutchinson
    •  & Juan F. Torres

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study shows that urban areas in the continental US are associated with decreased snowfall likelihood and frequency, in large part due to surface albedo contrasts with neighboring areas. They also see a faster decline in snow precipitation frequency with time.

    • Kaustubh Anil Salvi
    •  & Mukesh Kumar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study shows that ice loss and human water use models explain global and regional satellite-observed ocean mass changes since 2003 and thereby pinpoint the main cause of sea level rise, with a negligible role coming from natural variability.

    • Carsten Bjerre Ludwigsen
    • , Ole Baltazar Andersen
    •  & Matt A. King

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Towards optimizing the conjunctive operation of surface and groundwater resources in arid and semi-arid regions, here the authors propose a hybrid method involving moth-swarm and symbiotic organism search algorithms and artificial neural networks and demonstrate it for the HalīlRood basin.

    • Saeid Akbarifard
    • , Mohamad Reza Madadi
    •  & Mohammad Zounemat-Kermani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors demonstrate how managed urbanization in China could halve reactive nitrogen pollution to both the atmosphere and water resources. Investing 61 billion USD could provide 245 billion USD in benefits, while contributing to multiple SDG goals.

    • Ouping Deng
    • , Sitong Wang
    •  & Baojing Gu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This paper assesses future changes in flood magnitude across the conterminous United States based on multiple climate change scenarios. The results suggest that annual maximum peak discharge is projected to become more extreme under higher emission scenarios.

    • Hanbeen Kim
    •  & Gabriele Villarini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Membrane distillation is an emerging desalination technology to obtain freshwater from saline based on low-grade energy. Here the authors report on novel superhydrophobic hierarchical porous membranes with enhanced distillation flux suitable for desalination or wastewater treatment.

    • Youmin Hou
    • , Prexa Shah
    •  & Hans-Jürgen Butt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Li and colleagues develop a dual water-electricity cooperation (DWEC) framework that combines water and electricity trading to meet the often-conflicting demands of participating countries in the Lancang-Mekong river basin. They discuss the potential of this framework for application in other transboundary river systems.

    • Bingyao Zhang
    • , Yu Li
    •  & Ximing Cai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Smart membranes with responsive wettability show promise for controllably separating oil/water mixtures but it remains challenging to fabricate responsive and stable scalable membranes. Here, the authors develop a capillary force-driven self-assembling strategy to construct a scalable and stable CO2-responsive membrane for the smart separation of various oil/water systems.

    • Yangyang Wang
    • , Shaokang Yang
    •  & Xiaowei Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Liu et al. used the NASA GRACE/FO missions to show that since 2019, groundwater depletion in California’s Central Valley has accelerated by 31% compared to recent droughts, and has increased by a nearly a factor of 5 compared to the 60-year average.

    • Pang-Wei Liu
    • , James S. Famiglietti
    •  & Matthew Rodell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A new stalagmite record from northern Italy and other published data from Europe and northern Africa reveals a split in the climatological westerlies during the early LIA, possibly attributed to sea ice melting.

    • Hsun-Ming Hu
    • , Chuan-Chou Shen
    •  & Robert Korty

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A global fluoride hazard prediction map was created using machine learning and over 400,000 fluoride measurements, this shows ~180 million people are potentially affected by chronic fluoride exposure worldwide, mostly in Asia and Africa.

    • Joel Podgorski
    •  & Michael Berg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This work identifies the world’s most vulnerable basins to social and ecological impacts from freshwater stress and storage loss: a set of 168 hotspot basins for global prioritization that encompass 1.5 billion people, 17% of global food crops, 13% of global GDP, and hundreds of significant wetlands.

    • Xander Huggins
    • , Tom Gleeson
    •  & James S. Famiglietti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Much effort is invested in calibrating model parameters for accurate outputs, but established methods can be inefficient and generic. By learning from big dataset, a new differentiable framework for model parameterization outperforms state-of-the-art methods, produce more physically-coherent results, using a fraction of the training data, computational power, and time. The method promotes a deep integration of machine learning with process-based geoscientific models.

    • Wen-Ping Tsai
    • , Dapeng Feng
    •  & Chaopeng Shen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Integrating river system and economy-wide models in a dynamic, iterative, bidirectional fashion allows assessing some economic impacts of interventions in river systems. Here the authors use this framework to compare water resources management strategies for the Nile in a quest for efficient use of the river’s limited and stressed water resources.

    • Mohammed Basheer
    • , Victor Nechifor
    •  & Julien J. Harou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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.

    • Chunyang He
    • , Zhifeng Liu
    •  & Brett A. Bryan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Clean water is a fundamental resource, yet the economic impacts of pollution, drinking water availability, and greenhouse gas emissions from freshwaters are unknown. Here the authors combine models with economic assessments and find trillions of dollars in savings by mitigating lake methane emissions.

    • John A. Downing
    • , Stephen Polasky
    •  & Stephen C. Newbold

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Osmotically assisted reverse osmosis can overcome limitations of the reverse osmosis process but a strong membrane which can withstand a high hydraulic pressure is crucial. Here, the authors develop strong polymer thin film composite hollow fiber membranes with exceptionally high hydraulic burst pressures of up to 110 bar, while maintaining high water permeance and salt rejection.

    • Can Zeng Liang
    • , Mohammad Askari
    •  & Tai-Shung Chung

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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.

    • Di Long
    • , Wenting Yang
    •  & Yoshihide Wada

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High temperatures induced during lasing can deform the substrate polymer used for fabrication of electrically conductive membranes. Here, the authors show that sequential infiltration synthesis of alumina stabilizes polyethersulfone (PES) membranes against deformation above the polymers’ glass transition temperature.

    • David S. Bergsman
    • , Bezawit A. Getachew
    •  & Jeffrey C. Grossman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors of this study compile data on spatial and temporal dynamics of surface water bodies across China, covering a time span from 1989 – 2016. The study describes hot-spot areas with strongly decreasing trends in surface water area and terrestrial water storage in North China and discusses implications of water resources and security in China.

    • Xinxin Wang
    • , Xiangming Xiao
    •  & Bo Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impacts of power plant water shortage during drought on electricity prices are understudied. Here the authors show that on extreme days, almost 50% (7 GWe) of the freshwater thermal capacity is unavailable in the Great Britain and annualized cumulative costs on electricity prices are in the range of £29-95m per year.

    • Edward A. Byers
    • , Gemma Coxon
    •  & Jim W. Hall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Economic estimates of flood damages rely on depth–damage functions that are inadequately verified. Here, the authors assessed flood vulnerability in the US and found that current depth–damage functions consist of disparate relationships that match poorly with observations which better follow a bimodal beta distribution.

    • Oliver E. J. Wing
    • , Nicholas Pinter
    •  & Carolyn Kousky

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