Special Edition: Water

by Vivek Hv “Well I love that dirty water Oh, Boston, you’re my home” “My first memory of the Charles River is of a song we had growing up – it was love that Dirty water, Oh Boston, you’re my home,” said Susan, a long-time resident of…

by Michelle Frank figures by Jovana Andrejevic You’ve undoubtedly experienced the feeling of thirst: it’s a slight itch in the back of your throat, a distracting urge to turn away from whatever you’re doing and find something to drink. It drives you to…

by Kevin Dervishi Imagine you’re outside running errands, and you see a jogger trip over a sneaky curb. A bad situation becomes worse when that jogger hits their head on the way down (that mailbox just had to be there) and they’re lying unconscious at…

by Isabella Grabski figures by Abagail Burrus Your next smartphone might be made of materials from an unlikely source: the deep sea. Our current manufacturing practices are depleting terrestrial deposits of important metals like copper, aluminum, and…

by Tianjia Liu cover image by Elayne Fivenson A new normal in an intensifying global water cycle While humans have long adapted to regimes of water scarcity or excess, we are underprepared for extreme events — the “mega” droughts, storms, and floods that…

by Aparna Nathan In January 2018, Cape Town, South Africa started counting down toward “Day Zero.” It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was similarly apocalyptic: the day that the city would run out of water completely. Through discipline and…

by Andrew Greenspon figures by Hannah Zucker Picture yourself as the Curiosity Rover, which landed on Mars in 2012. You’ve just arrived on Mars after an eight-month journey from Earth. You begin traveling across the Gale crater toward Mount Sharp,…

by Valentina Lagomarsino figures by Rebecca Senft In the year 600 B.C.E., the climate was arid and dry along the Euphrates River in Western Asia, but there were lush gardens climbing up the walls of the metropolis, Babylon. It is believed that the…

by Molly Sargen figures by Daniel Utter Water makes up 60-75% of human body weight. A loss of just 4% of total body water leads to dehydration, and a loss of 15% can be fatal. Likewise, a person could survive a month without food but wouldn’t survive 3…

by Elaine Cheung “Use poison to cure poison.” This isn’t just a Chinese old wives’ tale, but an emerging approach being used to tackle one of the modern world’s greatest issues: availability of clean water. The largest portion of water consumed in…