As droughts intensify and the snowpacks diminish, California will need creative solutions to provide enhanced water supplies for urban use and agriculture. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories are working on addressing these problems, focusing on groundwater recharge, low-cost desalination, and energy efficient purification.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is one of 17 national laboratories funded by the Department of Energy.  (Note: the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is not to be confused with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which another one of the 17 national labs.)

Like other national labs, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory exists to tackle the biggest, hardest scientific challenges; however, Lawrence Berkeley is different in that they are the only national lab that is wholly managed by the University of California and is 100% dedicated to open research.  The lab represents a $1 billion per year federal investment that benefits the entire University of California system with more than 4000 California scientists use these facilities each year, including researchers from every UC campus.

At a forum at the UC Center in Sacramento earlier this year, researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories discussed their research on groundwater recharge, brackish desalination, and seawater desalination.

Read the full article.