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Strategies to increase water supply

Diverting supplies and increasing storage, dams and reservoirs, water transfers and desalination

Hoover dam in Arizona and Nevada, USA

Diverting supplies and increasing storage

In some parts of the world, evaporation can rapidly deplete water supplies. To overcome this, some countries divert surface water and pump it underground to be stored in aquifers. An example is Oklahoma, the USA, where water is stored deep underground and can be used when water availability is low.

Dams and reservoirs

Through the construction of dams, water can be controlled by creating reservoirs. Water can be stored in reservoirs during periods of water surplus and released when it is needed for activities such as irrigation . Many dams are also used to generate hydroelectric power (HEP) and control downstream flooding.

Hoover dam in Arizona and Nevada, USA

Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in Arizona and Nevada, USA

Despite the benefits dams and reservoirs can bring, they have disadvantages. Dams and reservoirs are costly to construct and can lead to people’s displacement, farmland flooding and the loss of ecosystems. The Three Gorges Dam in China displaced thousands of people and flooded a number of settlements.

Water transfers

Water transfer schemes move water from areas of surplus to areas of water deficit using pipelines or canals. Although the schemes can be costly, they are very effective and can be found in both HICs and LICs/NEEs. There are several water transfer schemes in the UK .

Desalination

A desalination plant diagram

A desalination plant

Desalination involves removing salt from seawater to create fresh water. The process is very energy-intensive and expensive, so it is only a viable option in HICs.

Desalination Plant in Lanzarote

Desalination Plant in Lanzarote, Spain.

Desalination currently occurs in Australia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Spain and the USA. In the future, desalination may become more common in NEEs as the increasing demand for freshwater restricts economic development .

Desalination is not without its environmental impacts. Salt waste can damage ecosystems along with the high carbon emissions due to energy demands.

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  • Published: 04 December 2023

Developments in desalination need a social sciences perspective

  • Brian Francis O’Neill   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9809-9939 1 &
  • Joe Williams   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2125-8951 2  

Nature Water volume  1 ,  pages 994–995 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Desalination is one of the most important responses to global water challenges. Decision-making on where, how and why to develop desalination plants must focus more on addressing social issues, such as universal access, justice and sustainability.

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Acknowledgements

The writing of this piece was supported in part by the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center at the University of Washington.

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University of Arizona News | Home

UA Researchers Take a Closer Look at the Future of Desalination As binational desalination plants are being considered as a strategy to combat water scarcity, scientists delve into the environmental, political and social impacts.

With desalination, Morua Estuary in Sonora, Mexico, is likely to be built out with more hotels and tourism growth.

As a variety of factors are expected to increase water scarcity throughout the Southwest region, several states, including Arizona, are considering plans to partner with Mexico to build binational desalination plants.

Having investigated the potential impacts of binational desalination systems, which are arrangements in which desalted water is produced in one country and delivered or exchanged with another country, a group of University of Arizona researchers, along with colleagues from universities in Mexico, published " Desalination and water security in the US-Mexico border region: assessing the social, environmental and political impacts ."

The article exploring desalination, a technological process that removes salts and other minerals from seawater, creating freshwater, was published in Water International.

Even though desalination remains the most expensive water option on the table, its allure continues to increase, especially since costs have decreased by about 50 percent in the last decade, said lead author Margaret Wilder , an associate professor in the UA School of Geography and Development and the Center for Latin American Studies.

Wilder said that she and her colleagues felt they needed to write the paper because desalination is often presented by agencies as an inevitability, but that desalination needs to be examined more critically beyond a simple cost-benefit analysis. Some use terminology such as "It's an endless water supply," and "It's a drought-free water supply," Wilder explained. However, political, social, economic and environmental implications must also be assessed.

Wilder's co-authors include UA colleagues Robert Varady , Robert Merideth and Adriana A. Zúñiga-Terán , researchers with the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy; Sharon Megdal , director of the Water Resources Research Center; and Christopher Scott , professor in the School of Geography and Development and the Udall Center. Other authors are Ismael Aguilar-Barajas, professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey; Nicolás Pineda-Pablos, professor at El Colegio de Sonora; and Jamie McEvoy , a former graduate student from the UA School of Geography and Development who is now an assistant professor at Montana State University.

The team conducted a case study of a proposed desalination plant on the Mexican coast of the Gulf of California in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora. Wilder, along with Pineda-Pablos, Varady, McEvoy and Scott, researched the proposed plant by interviewing water managers, conducting archival research and holding a workshop with local and state stakeholders. The research was funded by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The work was also supported by the Puentes Consortium of border universities, headquartered at Rice University, and also by the Lloyd's Register Foundation.

Wilder says that efficiency is a concern, as about 40-50 percent of the water is "lost" in the delivery system in Mexico compared to about 5 percent in the U.S. Improving efficiency, re-using water and other "soft-path" alternatives should be employed before turning to desalination. In addition, although the U.S. and Mexico have a recent history of amicable water sharing, relying on another country for water depends on sustained cooperation.

"This would hook us into path dependency," Wilder said. "Can we count on robust and sustained good relations between Mexico and the U.S., as we have had in the last 30 years, over water?"

One reason for building a plant in Mexico is that the U.S. already has the conveyance system to transport the water from Mexico to the U.S. due to the infrastructure already in place to make water deliveries to Mexico and to distribute Central Arizona Project water to cities. Environmental regulations are stricter in the U.S., as well. Wilder believes it would be cheaper to build and run the plant in Mexico.

The desalination process is energy intensive, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions. Reverse osmosis uses approximately 10 times more energy than traditional treatment of an equal volume of surface water.

But Wilder said the biggest environmental concern is the large amount of brine concentrate created in the desalination process. The most common disposal method of concentrated brine is dispersal back into the ocean, which has an unknown impact on marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

Speaking specifically about the proposed plant in Puerto Peñasco, Wilder said "the Upper Gulf of California is an extremely biodiverse environment; it has a lot of species so the environmental impact is extremely worrying. We are talking about over 16 million gallons of brine concentrate per day potentially pumped into the Gulf."

In addition to fragile and protected ecosystems being affected, the plant would impact the local communities, raising the question of how and whether Mexico would benefit from the arrangement.

Local Mexican communities would likely benefit from the increasing water supply, although the authors raised the prospect of unsustainable growth. Job creation, both in the desalination plant and in the growing tourism industry as a consequence of more water, might offset the loss of fisheries-related jobs. However, much of the area's tourism business is related to the biodiversity of the Upper Gulf.

Wilder emphasizes that the article should not be viewed as an opposition to desalination, but rather as a call for transparent and accountable assessment of desalination and its alternatives.

"I think most of us feel it is going to happen at some point," Wilder said. "But is it going to happen on the coast of Mexico? Is it going to happen with protection for the environment and with social protections so that we are not growing unsustainably?"

Margaret Wilder, an associate professor in the School of Geography and Development and the Center for Latin American Studies, conducts a workshop in Puerto Peñasco.

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UA School of Geography and Development

UA Center for Latin American Studies

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Journal of World-Systems Research

The World Ecology of Desalination

From cold war positioning to financialization in the capitalocene.

  • Brian F O'Neill University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9809-9939

World-systems scholars are increasingly engaged in issues at the intersection of ecological and economic concerns since the proliferation of debates on the Anthropocene. Recently, the alternative concept of Capitalocene—age of Capital—has emerged to draw attention to the world-ecological disruption of capitalism founded on cheap nature appropriation at ever-emerging extraction zones. This paper extends these discussions to the oceanic frontier, as the latest trend in the abstraction of value from the environment. Based on original archival research conducted in the context of a larger ethnographic project on the politics of industrial desalination—creating potable water from the sea—the article analyzes how this practice emerged in two phases. First, the Cold War opened the ocean as a commodity frontier during the pax Americana. Then, when this technopolitical agenda stagnated, financialization techniques were deployed to appropriate seawater, utilizing a mode of financial engineering—desalination via financialization reinstates the cultural hegemony of the Capitalocene that privileges infrastructure for water supply management solutions. As such, the article highlights the co-production of nature with financial capitalism.

Author Biography

Brian f o'neill, university of illinois at urbana-champaign.

Brian F. O’Neill is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Working at the nexus of environmental sociology and political ecology, he focuses on water politics in the U.S. Southwest and the globalization of large-scale water supplies.

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Desalination, space and power: The ramifications of Israel’s changing water geography

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2012, Geoforum

The geography of water -the sources, sinks and flow directions -is usually taken for granted. But with the advent of desalination a basic premise of the water geography is altered. Essentially, fresh water flows from the sea inland, rather than the other way round. This paper asks how important is this observation. To address this question it is necessary to identify the potential ramifications of the changes in the water geography brought about by desalination.

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Predictions of decreased rainfall in the Jordan River Basin (JRB) under climate change threatens disaster for its five riparian nations - Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine – in a region where freshwater is already scarce. It provides an additional tension in a river basin that has been a flashpoint for conflict since the 1940’s. The chapter outlines four paradigmatic approaches to water management in the region, and assesses their effectiveness in addressing the challenge posed by climate change. The military-diplomatic and technological paradigms reflect different and to some extent overlapping approaches by national governments to managing water resources. The sustainable trans-boundary paradigm reflects the efforts of Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli civil society groups to overcome the geo-political impasse to share knowledge, build joint visions for regional development, promote trust between communities along the JRB and achieve significant ecological restoration. Despite some significant successes, advocates of trans-boundary civil society approach have come into conflict with those within Palestinian and Jordanian civil society who approach the issue from within a fourth paradigm, the ‘water rights’ paradigm. This is because they argue that Palestinians and Jordanians should refuse to ‘normalise’ relations with Israel until there is a wider political settlement and a resolution of the current inequitable water situation based on international norms and law. Advocates of the transboundary civil society paradigm take a more pragmatic approach, arguing that action must be taken now given the parlous state of the JRB. They also argue for an alternative and, in their eyes, more achievable approach to equitable distribution based on ‘water needs’. Hostility against those pursuing transboundary civil society initiatives has proved a serious obstacle for the only current effort to build resilience within the JRB and promote a climate adaptation strategy based on transboundary co-operation.

David Katz , Deborah Shmueli , Ram Aviram

This article demonstrates how the availability of sea-water desalination is important, not just as an additional source of water supply on a national scale, but as a potential "game changer" in transboundary hydro-political interactions. The advent of desalination can change the nature of relations from a zero-sum game based on resource capture to a mutually beneficial business-like relationship typical in international commodity trade. It also allows for flexibility in policy approaches, and challenges the advantages and disadvantages hitherto thought of as inherent in upstream-downstream relations. This has wide ramifications for possible cooperation and conflict over international shared water resources. This study analyzes the possible implications of desalination on hydro-politics, and then presents a case study of the hydro-political relations between Israel and Jordan in order to demonstrate how different aspects of transboundary political interactions are already being affected by the development of desalination. It demonstrates the ways in which the option of desalination allows states to pursue both unilateral and collaborative policies that were not practical in the period prior to desalination. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for a revised analytical paradigm for analysis of hydro-politics in light of the development of desalination.

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Costs for seawater desalination have dropped significantly over the past decade due to technological advances. This has increased the attractiveness of desalination to policy-makers as a means to address water supply shortages. Israel, a country that faces chronic water scarcity, is in the process of developing wide-scale desalination capacity that is projected to supply all of the nation's domestic water use within a few years. Two issues are often neglected, however, by policy-makers pursuing desalination. The first is that seawater desalination is associated with a number of external costs, consideration of which may influence the optimal scale and timing of desalination implementation. The second is that alternative measures for managing water scarcity, including conservation techniques, are often more cost-efficient. This study estimates the full cost of desalination in Israel, including externalities, and then compares this to the costs of several alternative options for addressing water scarcity, including both demand management and supply augmentation measures. We find that desalination, despite being the primary policy option pursued by Israel, is among the least cost-efficient of all the alternatives considered, even without taking into account the externalities involved .

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Public–Private Partnerships in the Water Sector: The Case of Desalination

  • Published: 13 August 2021
  • Volume 35 , pages 3497–3511, ( 2021 )

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  • Robert A. Greer   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9458-6414 1 ,
  • Kyungsun Lee 1 ,
  • Amanda Fencl 1 &
  • Gretchen Sneegas 1  

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Public–private partnerships (PPPs) have grown in popularity as a method to leverage private sector actors in the production of government services. With the global challenge of water insecurity, PPPs are becoming more common for large scale water infrastructure projects. One prominent example is the water desalination industry. Global desalination capacity has grown in recent decades driven by demand for alternative water sources. However, desalination facilities remain complex and expensive operations. In this paper, we examine the role of private actors working in partnership with public entities in the delivery of drinking water using the case of desalination. We examine global trends in PPPs and discuss implications for the desalination industry as well as water infrastructure more broadly. Additionally, detailed data on desalination facilities were collected in Israel, Australia, and the United States including key stakeholder interviews. Results demonstrate an increase in PPP use in the water sector over time along with significant regional variation. We also find that the public sector partners often rely on private sector partners in the design, build, and operation stages of the project regardless of the amount of public financing.

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desalination case study geography

Availability of Data and Material

Available for purchase at desaldata.com.

The 21,729 projects are all projects identified in the DesalData as of February 6, 2020, regardless of their plant status (planned, awarded, construction, online, presumed online, offline, presumed offline, on hold, and canceled), technology type (RO, MSF, MED, etc.), feed water type (seawater, brackish water, wastewater, etc.) and customer type (industry, municipal, other) contracted from 1944 to February 2020.

In the DesalData, the capacity of project was categorized into small, medium, large, and extra-large based on Million Imperial Gallons per Day(MIGD): Small size ≦ 0.22; 0.22 < Medium size ≦2.20; 2.20 < Large size ≦ 11.00; 11.00 ≦ XL size.

Feedwater categorization is based on salinity thresholds: Brackish water or inland water pure water or tap water (TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) ≦ 500 ppm), river water or low concentrated saline water (500 ppm < TDS ≦ 3,000 ppm); (3,000 ppm < TDS ≦20,000 ppm); seawater (20,000 ppm < TDS ≦50,000 ppm); brine or concentrated seawater (50,000 ppm < TDS).

Data for the Israel case study is primarily drawn from informational and semi-structured interviews conducted between November 2019 and February 2020.

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Greer, R.A., Lee, K., Fencl, A. et al. Public–Private Partnerships in the Water Sector: The Case of Desalination. Water Resour Manage 35 , 3497–3511 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-021-02900-9

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March 9, 2017 by RetroMotion Creative

When it comes to water scarcity, Israel has found itself center stage on a global platform for the last two decades. Drought and agricultural collapse across the Middle East in not news to most of us, but how Israel has managed to rise above its water shortages is unprecedented. As the rest of the Middle East continues to dry up, a robust combination of wastewater recycling and desalination technology has turned Israel into a stable water consumer and water producer. The country’s success highlights the remarkable solution that lies in desalination technology and the potential for the developing world to make water scarcity a problem of the past.

Water in Israel

desalination case study geography

Since 80 percent of water resources are in the north, the government built the National Water Carrier in 1964, a series of pipes and tunnels that carries water from the Sea of Galilee to the bone-dry Negev desert in the south. But the National Water Carrier only does its job if there is enough freshwater to distribute, and water shortage has historically been no stranger to the arid region.

desalination case study geography

Water shortage hits the region

In the decades leading up to the 2000s, the problem of water shortage in Israel grew tremendously. Likely as a result of climate change, annual rainfall in Israel has been on the decline. The surface water of the Jordan River is disputed among Israel, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, and as a result of river diversion the Dead Sea at the end of the river is drying up. Other rivers and springs that feed into the Dead Sea have become polluted and depleted, leaving Israel with few options from which to extract freshwater. Even much of the groundwater has become undrinkable due to encroaching seawater and sewage pollutants.

So when the worst drought in over 900 years hit in 1998, Israeli leaders were forced to explore solutions to the region’s water scarcity. The worst of the drought took place between 1998 and 2002, and finally ended in 2008. But after 10 years of drought, the country’s largest source of freshwater, the Sea of Galilee, had dried up and other smaller aquifers were depleted as well.

Desalination comes to the rescue

Israeli leaders addressed the drought by making water production and recycling a national priority–something no other country has done. National campaigns to reuse and conserve regional water sources took off, but it was no secret that water recycling alone couldn’t quench the nation’s thirst. The installation of desalination plants was the real hero for Israel.

In 2002 the government approved the construction of new reverse osmosis plants along the Mediterranean. The plan was to build 5 new water-producing plants as fast as possible. The first two plants were completed and operating by 2008, the first of which won the Global Water Award’s Desalination Plant of the Year in 2006. By 2013 a total of four plants were turning seawater into freshwater with the fifth (but certainly not final) Ashdod plant completed in 2015.

desalination case study geography

Desalination in Israel today

Today, Israel gets a whopping 55 percent of its domestic water supply from desalinated seawater and brackish groundwater. Producing 150 million cubic meters each year, Israel’s Sorek desalination plant is the largest in the world! It alone provides 20 percent of the potable water that Israel consumes. In addition the army of 5 large desalination plants along the Mediterranean Sea, close to 30 smaller desalination plants filter brackish groundwater throughout the country, mostly in Negev desert in the south.

To supplement (and even partially replace) the National Water Carrier, the government has begun building a new National Water System. The new system uses pipelines to connect the new desalination plants with consumers, making it possible for such a significant portion of the Israeli population to get its water supply from desalination technology.

The future of desalination in Israel

While Israel’s desalination technology already produces 600 million cubic meters of water a year, more desalination plants are on the way. The government has a goal of reaching a desalinated water capacity of 750 million cubic meters each year by 2020. Given its current trajectory, experts expect that desalination plants will provide 70 percent of Israel’s drinking water by 2050. As the country moves forward as a global leader in recycled wastewater treatment and reverse-osmosis desalination, the future implications of its success are threefold.

desalination case study geography

Second, Israel has now stepped onto the world stage as a leader in water production. The country is the first to really pioneer the concept of the developed world embracing desalination as solution to water scarcity. Israel now serves as a model for other developed countries pursuing desalination. In fact, as part of the effort to provide drought relief in California, an Israeli company recently built the largest desalination plant in the western hemisphere just north of San Diego.

Finally, Israel’s success with desalination has introduced a potential path to peace in a region historically plagued with harsh geography and political strife in response to water shortage. Going into the details about how water scarcity has led to social and political unrest in the Middle East would require a whole separate article to cover. But long story short, removing water scarcity as a source of conflict in the Middle East would be a total game-changer, and Israel’s steps toward doing so are certainly something to applaud.

Thanks to reverse osmosis desalination technology, one of the driest countries on Earth now produces more freshwater than it needs. Today, the Sea of Galilee is fuller, Israeli farms are flourishing, and Negev desert communities have access to enough freshwater—a sharp contrast to their status following a decade of drought in the early 2000s. Israel now has years of desalination experience under its belt and proves a practical example of how other water-scarce regions of the world can successfully invest in desalination to combat water scarcity.

If your organization or municipality is ready for an industrial desalination system, contact ISI Water today.

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desalination case study geography

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An Israeli solar power plant wanted to reduce fresh water use. A multistage blowdown wastewater recycling system reduced use of fresh water by 50%.

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Podcast: Is taking A-Level Geography worth it?

UCL Research Fellow Abbie Chapman answers the question 'Is taking A-Level Geography worth it?' She tells Ask The Expert podcast host Roberta Livingston about her experience.

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ROBERTA LIVINGSTON:

Hello and welcome to Ask The Expert, where you ask the questions and UCL’s finest experts answer them. I’m your host Roberta Livingston, a schools engagement assistant at UCL East. In this episode we hear from Abbie Chapman. A research fellow at UCL who did a PhD in Deep Sea Ecology. Abbie is going to be answering the question ‘Is taking A-Level Geography worth it?’ Let’s hear what Abbie has to say.

ABBIE CHAPMAN:

I’m Abbie Chapman, I’m a research fellow at University College London and all that means is that I did a Phd so a longer period of study that was quite specialised, I did that in deep sea ecology actually so I studied life on the sea floor in the bottom of the oceans, where there’s no light. But when I joined UCL, I started researching life on land. And so what I look at now is I spend time mostly on the computer mapping and modelling. So I’m using coding languages, but also other computer programmes. And to look at effectively what the impacts of our food systems are on biodiversity, so the wildlife around us. Particularly in South Africa, India and the UK, but also other countries, I'm compiling to now as well.

So yeah. You're asking is a level geography worth it? Well, my biassed first answer would be yes, definitely, but I'm aware that the answer to this actually really varies depending on who you are and what you want to do and what you love. So the first question I'll be asking you to ask yourself is what do you actually love and enjoy? The reason I say that is because at the end of the day, it sounds really obvious, but you're going to be sitting in the classroom sitting, listening to lessons, reading things, doing the homework, doing your exams, and it's going to be on a certain subject. And it'll be really much, much easier for you to commit yourself to that, to motivate yourself for that, if you actually enjoy it. So I would really think about that before choosing your A levels because there's a lot of advice that goes around about what's the best a level and what's what's not such a good a level. And I have to be honest, in my experience, since all those conversations happened to me too. It's actually not been so important. In the end. I think a lot of the advice I got at school sometimes was a bit biassed towards what would look good at a university, but I'm not entirely sure that's always the best advice. I would, I think mostly about what you enjoy and what you might want to do in the future.

One thing I would flag is if you have a really specific career in mind now some people do. I didn't, but some people do. I would just maybe investigate if you want. If you have courses that you would need to do at a university or a college after your A levels, that would maybe you to start that career. They want specific subjects. Make sure you're doing those. So for instance, if you wanted to be a medical doctor or a vet or a dentist, and there are other careers too, where there's to be important to consider, just make sure you've got a levels that align for that, because maybe geography won't fit by the time you've got the sciences, they might be asking for, for instance, if you don't have a specific career in mind, geography can be really, really even even better than other subjects for a specific reason, really. And that it's sort of more than one subject captured in in geography.

So under geography you have a really rare opportunity to study a real breadth of areas or fields as they sometimes call it university. So universities split things into social sciences and life sciences, but what they're actually talking about there is things that you cover in geography. So in your social sciences, you'll be considering things like how people are living, how cities are built, which communities are more vulnerable in the world, how developing, how developing nations are developing and how they're moving forward in things like agriculture and things like urbanisation.

You'll also look at economics. You'll consider things like development are considered under that, but you'll also look at the impacts of different industries on different groups of people and then under life and physical and even chemical sciences, you do things like bits of geology. They won't be called this. They'll be called geography at school, but they'll be split when you go to university. So you do things like geology and study rock formations. You might study a bit of oceanography, actually, you'll learn about coastal erosion, but if you went to university to study oceanography, you'd learn about that process too.

So your rocks, your volcanoes, your coasts, your rivers, your flooding, that's often what people think of with geography. That's physical geography. There's also the human geography side that you tend to cover in A level geography as well. So you're you're getting a real breadth of understanding. And I also want a flag. I was, I was on a workshop recently with the British Ecological Society. They were asking us to try and make sure how we can capture climate change and what we need to know about climate change in the school curriculum. And when we were doing this, we actually found that most of the climate change science, most of the most up to date research on climate change is taught under geography. A level isn't actually captured so much under biology like they thought it might be, and so if you're interested in climate change and how the world's responding to it, how ecological communities say the wildlife's responding to it, you might find you get to do a bit of that under geography as well.

So I'd always say I'd also say if you find you started an A level like geography and you weren't so sure it was for you longer term, you didn't want to do geography at university or something like that. I mean, it opens up other doors. So I did it and then I actually did do geography at university because I did really enjoy it. But I did end up also doing oceanography because the university I was at was offering that as something I could do alongside. So I got to study the oceans as well as the land and which I particularly enjoyed. And a lot of the people I worked with left to completely different careers as well. It's a really good one for getting into teaching. I find a lot of a lot of my friends and stuff doing that, but others work. For big companies, so some of them work using the mapping skills they developed in geography at university. So basically decide where for instance, you could decide where the next big supermarket is going to be, or where this town needs to be, and considering how it's going to impact nature, how it's going to impact people, and where then next based place to use some land is.

It's becoming a really important subject and really important skill sets that you learn through it for the future of land use in the UK, for instance, or across the world. So I'd say if you if you're thinking thanks to geography about how the world works across space in different subjects in different fields, you're getting what are called interdisciplinary skills and you might not have come across this word yet, but I promise you it's a word you'll see a lot in the future. They want people these days in many jobs.That don't just think about one really narrow subject. You can be really passionate about, really one narrow subject, but it's really helpful if you can talk to people who are passionate about other ones too.

And that might sound really simple, but it can actually be really quite a difficult thing to do if you're not used to having to learn terminology from other subjects, or having to think in different ways and geography prepares you really quite well for that. And also, if you're into things like I was describing, you'll learn something called geographic information systems. That's something you learn at university level, probably not so much during an A level unless you want to explore it all. That means is you're doing some nice mapping really. So you're mapping out different things and seeing what overlaps with what, what's causing problems for what. Where can things go? Where can rivers flow? Where might flooding happen? There's lots of opportunities that are made possible by maps.

And I'd also say that I think part of the was I was looking at the curriculum now because I'm aware that I went a while ago and I didn't want to be misgiving, misleading information. And I noticed there still seems to be an aspect of field work which is great to see. Yes, you might get muddy or you might choose a city based project and not get to say muddy. But field work is brilliant for your CV regardless of what you want to do next because it if you didn't know this already and you're thinking of how to write  a CV for the future, it's an example of teamwork.

For example, you can organise yourself and to be honest it gives the really impression that you probably have a really good attitude and say putting field work on your CV. As always, I believe going to be a really good thing that employers in all sorts of industries. And academia and other types of jobs are going to really appreciate. So I'd also say bear that in mind. So yeah, putting your wellies on or donning your clipboard to go on and interview some people is always going to be well worth doing. So do enjoy that part of your project if you do decide to take the geography a level as well.

And so there you have it! For Abbie taking A-Level Geography was worth it as it opened up many doors for her including the opportunity to study Oceanography. A-Level Geography is almost like a gateway to specific subjects that are available at UCL and other universities so if for instance you wanted to study Geology, taking A-Level Geography would be a requirement. 

And that is the end of this episode, I hope it was helpful! If you wish to submit your own question for an expert to answer just type in Ask The Expert UCL on your search engine and our website should be the first to pop up.

Til next time! Thank you.

Answered by:

desalination case study geography

Abbie Chapman

Conservation, Geography, Oceanography, and Ecology

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IMAGES

  1. (PDF) Seawater desalination by reverse osmosis (case study)

    desalination case study geography

  2. (PDF) Environmental Impact of Seawater Desalination Plants: Case Study

    desalination case study geography

  3. (PDF) Environmental Impacts of Seawater Desalination: Arabian Gulf Case

    desalination case study geography

  4. desalination graphic

    desalination case study geography

  5. (PDF) Impacts of Discharge of Desalination Plants on Marine Environment

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  6. Desalination: Pros, Cons & Environmental Impacts

    desalination case study geography

VIDEO

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  2. CASE STUDY AQA Geog Choco rainforest causes and

  3. Desalination: Class # 20

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COMMENTS

  1. PDF Responding to future water demand

    Diverting Supplies CASE STUDY: China's South-North Water Transfer China's South-North water transfer project is one of the largest water transfer projects in the world. The project started planning in 1952, with work starting in 2002, expecting to be completed by 2050.

  2. Strategies to increase water supply

    Water transfers Water transfer schemes move water from areas of surplus to areas of water deficit using pipelines or canals. Although the schemes can be very expensive, they are very effective and can be found in both HICs and LICs/NEEs. There are several water transfer schemes in the UK. Desalination A desalination plant

  3. Desalination in northeastern U.S.: Lessons from four case studies

    We review four desalination projects in Northeastern U.S. We review conditions that led to the initiation of desalination projects. Financing, regulatory challenges and public support are critical for success. Cost-benefit analysis of alternatives needed to make optimal decisions.

  4. Geospatial analysis of desalination in the US

    1 Introduction - Need and challenges for geographical representation of desalination plants in the US As reported by the US Census Bureau (2012), the United States population is expected to increase by 31% by 2050.

  5. The politics, geography, and economics of desalination: a critical

    These drawbacks are reviewed in detail and exemplified with reference to the case of Spain. Eventually, this article discusses to what extent desalination constitutes a radical break with the old 20th century hydraulic paradigm and interrogates whether it risks repeating the same mistakes, thus becoming a maladaptive strategy to cope with 21st ...

  6. Developments in desalination need a social sciences perspective

    6 Altmetric Metrics Desalination is one of the most important responses to global water challenges. Decision-making on where, how and why to develop desalination plants must focus more on...

  7. The global status of desalination: An assessment of current

    Overall, there is an increasing trend of the cumulative capacity of operational desalination plants worldwide, from just 27,252 m 3 /d in 1969 to 97.2 million m 3 /d in 2020 (Fig. 1 (b)), although Bennett [36] in 2013 predicted an increase in the total world desalination capacity to 97.5 million m 3 /d by 2015. The year-on-year increase in installed capacity has also remained positive, from an ...

  8. UA Researchers Take a Closer Look at the Future of Desalination

    The team conducted a case study of a proposed desalination plant on the Mexican coast of the Gulf of California in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora. Wilder, along with Pineda-Pablos, Varady, McEvoy and Scott, researched the proposed plant by interviewing water managers, conducting archival research and holding a workshop with local and state stakeholders.

  9. Desalination and water reuse to address global water scarcity

    7 Case studies for desalination and water reuse 7.1 Desalination—case studies The need for desalination technologies and their implementation for alternative water supplies has been recognized in many parts of the world especially in arid regions including Middle Eastern and North African and Mediterranean countries.

  10. The World Ecology of Desalination

    Aalbers, Manuel B. 2020. "Financial Geography III: The Financialization of the City." ... "World-system Studies of the Environment." Journal of World-Systems Research 3(3):369-80. Bauer, Andrew M., and Erle C. Ellis. 2018. ... Larson, Rhett B. 2012. "Innovation and International Commons: The Case of Desalination Under International ...

  11. (PDF) Desalination Space and Power: The ramifications of Israel's

    transboundary flows of natural water, the new geography may. have implications for transboundary water agreements. In terms. of power, desalination turns the downstream riparian into an up ...

  12. (PDF) Desalination, space and power: The ramifications of Israel's

    This the voluminous literature on this case study. Then, the practical system was extended to the West Bank and Gaza after their occupa- and theoretical insights gained from the Israeli case are dis- cussed, followed by conclusions regarding the general ramifica- tions of desalination for intra-national and inter-national power 6 Feitelson ...

  13. The Legal Geographies of Water Claims: Seawater Desalination in Mining

    The case studies are revealing two gaps: (1) how desalination alters existing water rights, and (2) how desalination matches up against the purity and quantity of other freshwater sources. Implications of these ambiguities demonstrate the importance of legal and institutional frameworks for how desalination works, or fails to work, under its ...

  14. Public-Private Partnerships in the Water Sector: The Case of Desalination

    However, to provide a more in-depth understanding on PPPs in the water sector through the lens of desalination, it is helpful to examine case studies. We use three case studies: Israel; Perth, Western Australia; and Carlsbad, California, USA. The case studies draw on document and literature review as well as data from semi-structured interviews ...

  15. Geospatial analysis of desalination in the US

    Applied Geography. Volume 71, June 2016, Pages 115-122. Geospatial analysis of desalination in the US - An interactive tool for socio-economic evaluations and decision support. Author links open overlay panel Jadwiga R. Ziolkowska a, ... a case study in the Lake Tai basin, eastern China. Applied Geography (2012)

  16. Solar desalination: Cases, synthesis, and challenges

    Desalination processes are energy-intensive and currently rely on fossil fuels that contribute to global warming and exacerbate the planet's water woes. Solar power, as a low-carbon energy resource, can reduce desalination's environmental footprint.

  17. Perspectives and challenges for desalination in developing countries

    AbstractThis study explores the current situation of the membrane desalination market; it estimates how many countries and which ones will suffer from water scarcity by 2050 and presents three case studies (India, China and Algeria). Finally it highlights some challenges for the implementation of desalination in water scarce countries. The projections in this study indicate that 44 countries ...

  18. How Desalination Came to the Rescue in Israel

    Desalination comes to the rescue Israeli leaders addressed the drought by making water production and recycling a national priority-something no other country has done. National campaigns to reuse and conserve regional water sources took off, but it was no secret that water recycling alone couldn't quench the nation's thirst.

  19. [PDF] Addressing Desalination's Carbon Footprint: The Israeli

    Given the extraordinary proliferation of seawater desalination plants, Israel's transition to become a country that almost exclusively relies on desalination for municipal water supply is instructive as a case study, especially given concerns about the technology's prodigious carbon footprint. This article offers a detailed description of the country's desal experience with a focus on ...

  20. Desalination, space and power: The ramifications of Israel's changing

    We analyze the ramifications of desalination using Israel as a case study. Desalination divorces water flows from their natural spatiality. Desalination alters power relations in the water sector. In transboundary settings desalination opens positive sum options but also raises new issues. Desalination and can be used to advance neolib...

  21. A level geography

    China, 2019 Why were desalination plants needed? Industry demands What is special about these desalination plants? They are zero-waste Advantages (3 general) - good alternative to prevent droughts - stops over-reliance on aquifers - doesn't drain local sources of water Disadvantages (3 general) - not economically sustainable

  22. Desalination Case Studies

    Ultrafiltration and seawater reverse osmosis desalination for the production of demineralized water at a power plant. UF Allows Use of RO for Power Plant's Water Demineralization A power plant wanted to replace its ion exchange system with RO to provide demineralized water, but feed water quality was poor.

  23. Podcast: Is taking A-Level Geography worth it?

    For Abbie taking A-Level Geography was worth it as it opened up many doors for her including the opportunity to study Oceanography. A-Level Geography is almost like a gateway to specific subjects that are available at UCL and other universities so if for instance you wanted to study Geology, taking A-Level Geography would be a requirement. ...