This study introduces a sunlight-activated copper-based catalyst that can rapidly break down a wide range of pollutants and microorganisms, offering a durable, practical way to clean contaminated lakes and other natural waters.

Wetland conservation is an undervalued strategy for managing flood risk exacerbated by climate change. This study quantifies the impact of wetland loss on flood insurance claims across the USA, revealing a US$10.1 billion increase in claims since 1985. The analysis also highlights regions where conservation benefits outweigh costs, informing land-use policy and insurance pricing.

The future of hydrology lies in learning from patterns to understand processes across scales.

Antimicrobial resistance in the environment cannot be understood by genes or antibiotics alone. A system-level perspective integrating ecological, hydrological, and functional processes is needed to capture how resistance emerges and spreads.

Weather whiplash events in 2024–2025 across Europe and the Americas exposed how interacting atmospheric drivers can trigger unprecedented floods with major socio-economic and environmental consequences. These events highlight governance gaps and underscore the need for integrated hydrosocial strategies combining improved forecasting, science-based land-use planning, and nature-based management.

This Perspective examines how a systemic, service-oriented framing of nature-based solutions can enhance multifunctionality and long-term resilience within complex social–ecological systems. Aligning adaptive co-management, integrated indicators and governance–finance structures enables nature-based solutions interventions to address interconnected climate, biodiversity and water challenges.

This work presents a scalable and flexible mixed-matrix membrane to overcome mass-transport limitations in sorption-based atmospheric water harvesting, enabling ultrafast sorption–desorption kinetics and high-productivity water harvesting prototypes driven by sunlight or electricity.

A pioneering environmental engineer who transformed fundamental research on the chemistry of arsenic and other contaminants into practical solutions for delivering safe drinking water.

Urea is the world’s most widely used nitrogen fertilizer. Elevated urea use can induce detrimental eutrophication of shallow surface waters in agricultural regions, accelerating water quality deterioration globally in these regions.