33 million for research into freshwater

For centuries already, the rises in temperature are monitored meticulously worldwide. Yet, this does not happen with water. Even though all the available freshwater has already been present on this Earth for millions of years and keeps evaporating, falling back down or being recycled by nature and mankind. 

The understanding of the global water cycle is lacking. Researchers from various universities and institutions in the world often work in isolation from each other and water data is fragmented, inconsistent and difficult to access. In order to close that gap, the Schmidt Sciences Foundation has made 33 million dollars available to four international research teams for research into the worldwide availability of freshwater.

Global water log

The money will be invested in the setting up of a ‘global water log’, a definitive overview of the freshwater supplies on Earth. This log is meant to make the management of the available water effective, sustainable and fair. Two academics from Utrecht University and their research projects join this initiative, which was given the name Virtual Institute for Earth's Water (VIEW). Hydrologist Marc Bierkens leads a project which charts how the freshwater supplies on our Earth have changed in the past sixty years, think along the lines of groundwater, crop growth, water use by humans and infrastructure. With help from worldwide water models and AI, his team tries to figure out where and why water scarcity comes about.

Water supplies in mountains

Mountain hydrologist Walter Immerzeel from Utrecht University works on an extensive worldwide analysis of mountain-water supplies from the year 2000 onwards. Much freshwater is trapped in glaciers and snowpacks in high mountain areas, and these provide the essential freshwater downstream. So it is important to investigate the state of these supplies. Fieldwork takes place in difficult to reach high locations in the Himalayas, the Pamir Mountains, the Canadian Rockies and the Andes.

Besides the Utrecht-based projects, work is also being done on an atlas of river ecosystems and a method to integrate local community data into worldwide water models, in Ghana, Ethiopia, Laos and India, among other locations. Schmidt Sciences has by now already opened a second round for research proposals, focused on evaporation processes and tipping points in the freshwater cycle. The urgency is clear: clean and sufficient freshwater is not to be taken for granted anymore.