Humans versus water

There are water detectives looking for new solutions to floods and droughts. Humans have long tried to contest water, we have straightened rivers that once meandered for transportation purposes. Dams have been built along rivers and lakes to protect people from flooding, and entire cities have been built on drained and filled wetlands. Dams have been built on rivers to accumulate water for later use.

Levees, which narrow channels and cause water to flow higher and faster, almost always break. Cities on former wetlands flood regularly, often catastrophically, dams depriving the downstream surroundings of the sediments needed to protect coastal areas against sea level rise. Straight streams flow faster than meandering ones, devastating river bed ecosystems and giving water less time to seep down and replenish groundwater supplies.

These water sleuths have found ways to give the slippery substance the time and space it needs to seep underground, feeding groundwater supplies in turn feeding rivers from below, helping to maintain water levels and the ecosystems.

Understanding how to work with water, not against it, will help humanity weather this time of drought and deluge that is being exacerbated by climate change. We must learn to live within our means of water because water will undoubtedly win.