Why We Need Intervention Hydrology for Cities & Manufacturing
Science needs to focus on securing water resources for these two critical sectors
By John Sabo, director, Future H2O
Most science about water resources is done in the context of food and agriculture — which makes sense, given the land area that we’ve devoted to agriculture globally and ag’s impact on the hydrological cycle and on water resources and management.
But what about cities and manufacturing? Why is there comparatively so little study of how to secure water resources for those two massively important sectors? The knowledge gap doesn’t make sense: the planet is already majority urban and will become increasingly so, while manufacturing is a pillar of the global economy that in many countries (such as the United States) contributes much more to GDP than agriculture.
And manufacturing now already spends vast amounts of money cleaning the water it uses in its processes. The sector could save a lot of money if we can figure out how to protect upstream watersheds to ensure it clean, adequate supplies of water. Meanwhile, many cities in the U.S. West are investing in such upstream watershed improvements, but on a “random acts of kindness” model (to borrow a phrase from John Radtke at Coca-Cola) that isn’t scientific.
We need a new kind of hydrology — intervention hydrology — that anticipates and engineers a sustainable water future for these sectors (especially given climate change) rather than modeling conditions of the past.
Instead of endless models of basins that look at the trends and tell us those trends all look abysmal, we should be taking the hydrology model and asking “what if?”
— John Sabo
The prejudice in the basic science community is that addressing this set of problems requires engineering, not science. But the science that needs to be done is anticipatory. Instead of endless models of basins that look at the trends and tell us those trends all look abysmal, we should be taking the hydrology model and asking “what if?” How do we re-engineer watersheds to deliver to cities and manufacturing the best outcomes, knowing what we know about the physics of the system?
Basic science has all sorts of valuable contributions to make to intervention hydrology. We need our “what if?” answers replicated along gradients of different kinds of rivers and different kinds of hydrological profiles. Which kinds of river networks would be best to restore? In which parts of watersheds with different land use and different amounts of rainfall? Etc.
Corporations from Intel to Coca-Cola are also already investing in this work. I believe manufacturing as well as cities will be very receptive to our science and science-based insights. There is money to be saved — and that means there’s much more interest and uptake in optimized solutions. But we need a hydrology that charts pathways to those solutions.
For more information about ASU Future H2O’s work and research on creating opportunities for global water abundance, visit our website and subscribe to our newsletter.
