Our Global Water Challenges

Our Global Water Challenges - Professor Sarah Cook part of the Current Advances in Biosciences Seminar Series 

As a society we have become heavily ‘detached’ and disconnected from understanding our water environments. Yet, our water resources are one of the most vulnerable to climate change, with water stewardship key to protecting our natural environment, business and economic growth, alongside societal health and wellbeing. This seminar will begin to introduce the diversity of water quality challenges facing us through an exploration of land-use change on waterborne carbon emissions from tropical peatlands, transport of solute pollution in an urban catchment in India and impacts of river bed hyporheic exchange mechanisms. The seminar will highlight novel ways to quantify, trace and determine contaminants and the pathways of pollutants in both our environment and more controlled laboratory settings. To conclude, I will discuss the social and innovative solutions driving forward changes in water quality data and environmental monitoring – reattaching society back to their catchment.