Water supply in the USA Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Water supply in the USA - Research Paper Example The observation is that climate change further worsens existing pressures on water supplies in all of the United States, relating to the way Americans routinely use water not just for consumption, but also for a host of economic activities, including agriculture, manufacturing, and the generation of power, among many uses. The general problem relates to the overall impact of climate change relating to elevating the demand for water in all areas of the United States, while at the same time exerting a downward pressure on available supplies. This in turn leads to a further imbalance tilting towards water scarcity and the issues tied to that, including the degradation of water quality, and issues relating to prioritizing access (US EPA (c); Climate.gov). In many areas of the United States where water supplies are already thin and the water cycles and the ecosystems that they support are already delicate and in precarious states, climate change is seen as further putting those water syst ems and ecosystems at risk for systemic collapse (Frederick and Gleick), leading to potential conflicts (US Global Change Research Program). The problem relates to determining the impacts of climate change on the water supplies in the southern portion of the United States, detailing the impacts in the southeast and the southwest and undertaking a comparison and contrast and a general analysis of those impacts between the two halves. Related to this discussion are the kinds of interventions that are being undertaken, and how those interventions tie back to issues relating to sustainability of the interventions and the water supplies in the long run. That latter discussion with regard to the interventions, meanwhile, is done in the context of the academic literature on past interventions and how those interventions have fared, both within and outside of the United States. The problem itself of the impact of climate change on water supplies in the southern US is situated in the context of the water problem in the rest of the world, and the framework for sustainability that has been proposed to manage global and national water supplies (Postel and Richter; Pielou; Gerlak and Wilder; Bakker; US EPA). Turning to the problem contexts and background, climate change in general has been having a profound impact on the environment and on the key resources that sustain the populations of countries around the world.,The US is not an exception to this. The change in the ecosystems are breeding changes to the availability, quality, and access to vital resources, such as water. The effect is that where there are existing pressures on those resources in terms of availability and viability, those pressures are increasing. Moreover, the pressures are translating to new threats to the sustainability of the resource and of the human populations that depend on them. Situating the problem within a global context, one can see that since climate change impacts water quality and water availability for instance, different countries already on the brink of water crises are most vulnerable at present (Gerlak and Wilder; US EPA; US EPA (c)). Focusing on the United States,