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Science 14 July 2000:
Vol. 289. no. 5477, pp. 284 - 288
DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5477.284
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Reports

Global Water Resources: Vulnerability from Climate Change and Population Growth

Charles J. Vörösmarty, 1245* Pamela Green, 124 Joseph Salisbury, 134 Richard B. Lammers 124

The future adequacy of freshwater resources is difficult to assess, owing to a complex and rapidly changing geography of water supply and use. Numerical experiments combining climate model outputs, water budgets, and socioeconomic information along digitized river networks demonstrate that (i) a large proportion of the world's population is currently experiencing water stress and (ii) rising water demands greatly outweigh greenhouse warming in defining the state of global water systems to 2025. Consideration of direct human impacts on global water supply remains a poorly articulated but potentially important facet of the larger global change question.

1 Water Systems Analysis Group,
2 Complex Systems Research Center,
3 Ocean Processes Analytical Laboratory,
4 Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space,
5 Earth Sciences Department, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)