Living with Water

The factors affecting water quality are many: the increasing buying power and health concerns of the world population contribute to the creation of new products, whose production and disposal lead to the release of chemicals harmful to the environment; the ever-growing world population requires a steady food supply, which increases the pressure to use even more fertilizers and agrochemicals to support crops and control various pests; and due to climate change, water quality is rapidly changing (e.g., oceans are becoming increasingly warmer and acidic).

Using specific examples, Living With Water will address the many challenges of providing clean water to the growing world population. It will also discuss the new technologies that are being developed, for example, to treat and reuse waste waters, and monitoring approaches that help scientists and stakeholders to assess water quality risks. Such risk assessments are urgently needed to help draft legislations and allow enforcement to ensure accessibility to quality water for all.

The structure of the book will be the following: each chapter will provide information about a specific water environment (headwaters, rivers, oceans) and the challenges it faces. This will be followed by discussion of the pollution effects and actions taken to redress the situation. Finally, future trends will be discussed.