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When most people think of sea otters, they picture these charismatic creatures wrapped in kelp as they float on their backs in the ocean. But this iconic image is only part of the story. Sea [...]

People have dreamed of turning salty water into drinking water since the early 1960s, when President John F. Kennedy famously said, “If we could produce fresh water from saltwater at a low cost, [...]

As a little girl in Iran, Stanford water researcher Newsha Ajami always knew she could achieve whatever she wanted. “I was raised as a gender-blind child,” she recalled. “I was taught that I [...]

Stroll through just about any of the cities ringing the San Francisco Bay and you’re likely walking on water. Not literally, of course. Rather, chances are that somewhere along your way, there’s [...]

The San Francisco Bay Area is already crowded, ranked among the nation’s top ten most congested metropolitan regions, and soon it will be even more packed. Over the next two decades, our [...]

Last winter was so wet for so long that we could hardly get rid of all that water fast enough, as jaw-dropping volumes of stormwater rushed along gutters, into stormdrains, and ultimately out to [...]

On an overcast May morning, Karen James crouched on the edge of Rodeo Lagoon in the Marin Headlands. The sun was barely up, and the only sounds were birdsong and the distant crash of waves. The [...]

This winter’s storms piled so much snow on the Sierra Nevada that people standing on Mount Diablo could see the range as a serrated band of bright white on the horizon. That’s good news for the [...]

A new approach to flood management around the San Francisco Bay could trim maintenance costs for water agencies, restore habitat for endangered species, and help protect against rising seas. What [...]

Drones may be coming to a public agency near you. The benefits are obvious: Unmanned aerial vehicles are faster and cheaper than manned flights or boots on the ground, and can also go places that [...]