Problem Statement

The water cycle is one of the first great cycles with which many people engage during their basic education. Though water cycle diagrams may not be intended as comprehensive and quantitative representations of the entirety of ecohydrological science, they effectively play that role for many educators, policymakers, and researchers, which increasesthesocietal stakes of systematic inaccuracies. Diagrams of the global water cycle explicitly and implicitly teach core scientific principles including conservation of mass, the reality that human activity can cause global-scale changes, and the concept that distant processes can have acute, local effects. Flaws in this pedagogic tool could therefore undermine efforts to promote understanding of water and general scientific thinking. Because humans now dominate critical components of the hydrosphere, and nearly 4 billion people face severe water scarcity, improving our understanding of the global water cycle has graduated from an academic exercise to a planetary priority.

Module Overview

This module aims to improve understanding of the water cycle in the anthropocene. This is accomplished by introducing the global water crisis and providing case studies of the extreme water regimes we deal with on a global scale - flooding and drought. The module then compares the natural water with the human-altered water cycle and encourages critical thinking regarding the role humans play in the water cycle. The module wraps up by reviewing nature-based solutions to the issues of the water crisis.