Once in a while, we get a good piece of environmental news. Such is the case with a new assessment on the vulnerability of U.S. urban areas to water shortages.
Traditionally, water vulnerability has been assessed by examining regional precipitation and runoff, to indicate how much water might be available to an urban area. The new assessment accounts for the infrastructure that many cities have constructed to store water, such as reservoirs, or to access sources outside their local domain using pipelines or aqueducts.
The result? Using the traditional method, nearly half of U.S. metropolitan areas of over 100,000 people were classified as at risk. Using the new approach, the number drops to about 17%.
There are few surprises among the cities that remain on the high risk list: San Diego, El Paso, and Miami. In the northeastern U.S, most cities are less vulnerable, especially in the face of the greater precipitation that is expected in that region with global climate change.
This new assessment lowers our estimates of the impacts of a future drier climate in the interior of the United States—at least for the urban populations that live there. Nevertheless, profligate use of water is certainly not advised for areas like Phoenix or Tucson and the other 17% of urban areas that are on the “at risk” list.
Web Links
Padowski and Jawitz (2012) in Water Resources Research
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012WR012335
Photo, taken on April 1, 2006, courtesy of Craig Stanfill via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY, with partial support from the Field Day Foundation.