Stockholm university

Human disruption to Earth’s freshwater cycle has exceeded the safe limit, our research shows

Green water – the rainwater available to plants in the soil – is indispensable for life on and below the land. But in a new study in Nature, presented in The Conversation, researchers from Stockholm University found that widespread pressure on this resource has crossed a critical limit.

Uttorkat landskap
Photo from The Conversation: Scott Book/Shutterstock,

The article “Human disruption to Earth’s freshwater cycle has exceeded the safe limit, our research shows” was published in The Conversation on June 27, 2022, and is written by Arne Tobian, PhD Candidate in Planetary Boundaries, Stockholm University, Dieter Gerten, Working Group Leader, Terrestrial Safe Operating Space, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany and Lan Wang Erlandsson, Researcher and Theme leader, Anthropocene Dynamics, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University.

They write:
“So far, it has been suggested that human use of freshwater is still within safe limits globally. But earlier assessments only considered the extraction of what is called blue water – that which flows in rivers and resides in underground aquifers. Even then, regional boundaries are likely to have been crossed in many river basins due to a sixfold increase in the extraction of blue water over the past century. Besides irrigating crops to sate growing demand from people and livestock, population growth and higher standards of living have raised global domestic and industrial water consumption, disrupting aquatic ecosystems and decimating the life within them.

By including green water in our assessment, we found that freshwater’s ability to sustain a stable Earth system is even more threatened than first reported.”

Read the article published in The Conversation:
https://theconversation.com/human-disruption-to-earths-freshwater-cycle-has-exceeded-the-safe-limit-our-research-shows-182562

Read more about the collaboration between Stockholm University and The Conversation and how to pitch an article idea

More articles in The Conversation by researchers at Stockholm University: https://theconversation.com/institutions/stockholm-university-1019

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