Updates to satellite data show that California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin River basins are at near decade-low water storage levels. These and other findings on the State’s dwindling water resources were documented in an advisory report released today from the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling (UCCHM) at the University of California, Irvine.

Responding to Governor Jerry Brown’s recent declaration of a drought emergency in California, a team of UCCHM researchers has updated its research on the state’s two largest river basins, and the source of most its water. The region also encompasses the Central Valley, the most productive agriculture region in the country. The Central Valley depends entirely on the surface and groundwater resources within the river basins to meet its irrigation needs and to produce food for the nation. Read more

Phosphorus can be found in fertilizers, drinks and detergents. It accumulates in waterways and pollutes them. For this reason the German Phosphorus Platform has the goal to recover this valuable, but at the same time, harmful element from water. How this can be done will be shown by researchers at the Hannover Trade Fair / IndustrialGreenTec from April 7 — 11 in Hannover (hall 6, booth J18) where visitors can try out the method for themselves.

 Using magnets the superparamagnetic particles in the water can be removed along with their phosphorus load.

Not only plants, but also humans and animals need phosphorus, which is a building block of DNA. Many biological processes in our body can only take place if phosphorus atoms are also present. But farmers and industrial enterprises use so much of this element that soil is over-fertilized and waterways are contaminated. Read more

A new study using data from NASA satellite missions finds that, although the long-term water picture for the Aral Sea watershed in Central Asia remains bleak, short-term prospects are better than previously thought.

Once the fourth largest inland sea in the world, the Aral Sea has lost 90 percent of its water volume over the last 50 years. Its watershed — the enormous closed basin around the sea — encompasses Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

Graduate student Kirk Zmijewski and assistant professor Richard Becker of the University of Toledo, Ohio, wanted to find out whether all of the water was gone for good, or whether some of it might have ended up elsewhere in the watershed, behind dams or in aquifers. They also wanted to gauge whether decreasing rainfall has contributed to the catastrophic water loss. Read more

The Portland Water Bureau currently employs 12 water meter readers responsible for reading meters at homes and businesses on their assigned routes throughout the City of Portland. Meter readers fall under the Customer Services Group, and are based out of the Water Bureau’s Interstate Facility in north Portland.

Meter readers work Monday through Friday, in all weather conditions including snow, ice, and frozen rain. Reading a meter may seem easy, but there’s definitely an art to it. Readers are often challenged by inclement weather conditions, piled snow, aggressive animals, parked vehicles, overgrown plants, and construction materials. Oftentimes, customers place compost and recycling carts and garbage containers over their meters on collection day, affecting access and quick reads. Read more

LONDON – Norwegian hydropower schemes linked to Europe’s large wind farm projects could successfully act as a backup when wind power fails to deliver enough energy, according to SINTEF, the largest independent Scandinavian research organization.

Smøla Wind Farm is a 68 turbine wind farm located on the island of Smøla in Norway. Researchers say energy from surplus wind power will provide “battery” power to even out energy supply & demand. Credit: Flickr/Statkraft

With both on- and off-shore wind power being seen as key to reducing the EU’s carbon emissions by 80-95 percent by 2050, a big hurdle for the technology is solving the problem of intermittent power production. Sometimes there will be too much power on offer, and at others too little. Read more