Find out--down to the block--how well America is going to
handle the already-started water crisis. Live in a danger zone? Time to
start making preparations now.
We tend to take easy, safe access to water for granted until there's a
shortage of it (like in Texas) or an overflow (as with Hurricane
Irene). There are a number of water risks that the world will face in
the coming years, including deteriorating water quality, growing competition for limited access to resources, and an increase in water scarcity. The World Resource Institute's Water Risk Atlas outlines those risks--and gives a preview of what you can expect in your town or city in the coming years.
The
Atlas covers water risks across the globe--a red area means that it
faces extremely high baseline water stress, while blue indicates low
water stress. Clicking on individual areas yields information about
their risks. A look at the Western U.S., for example, tells us that the
Colorado River Basin faces "a chronic water shortage problem due to
rapid population growth, significant agricultural water demand (which
accounts for 78% of water use), and an over-allocation of water permits
to users in the basin."
We learn even more by searching for
individual locations. A search for Boulder, Colorado, tells us that the
city faces "high water stress" as a baseline condition. In three years,
the city will still face near-normal conditions, but by 2025, it may be
"extremely more stressed." Translation: Residents might start to think
twice about taking long showers.
But don't decide to high-tail it
out of your water-stressed city just yet. There are a handful of other
tools that can help predict what the world will look like in the coming
years, including the Union of Concerned Scientists' map of potential climate change effects, and Cal-Adapt, a site
that displays what the
temperature increase will be in your town (or even neighborhood) through
2050.
Check out WRI's map here.
By Ariel Schwartz (
1 comments:
Nice web application, with loads of data.
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