Committee Identifies Priorities for Nation’s Future Water Resource Challenges

Presented by Office of Public Affairs and Communications

Everything from aging water-related infrastructure and extreme weather to growing populations and climate change impacts the quantity and quality of water resources available throughout the United States. To better understand which challenges will be most important to address over the next 25 years, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee has released a report identifying the nation’s prevalent water resource needs, which provided advice to the U.S. Geological Survey Water Mission Area (USGS WMA), which commissioned the report.

Jennifer Tank, Galla Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame and director of the Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative, served as one of 15 experts on the NASEM’s Committee on Future Water Resource Needs for the Nation. In the report, the committee outlined six critical challenges of both national and global water concerns as well as its recommendations.