What are some of the water problems scientists foresee?
We already know about problems that have to do with pollution, especially from runoff. Runoff is mostly water that runs off our streets and lawns, and contains pesticides and metals. But now there’s a whole new class of contaminants that people haven’t paid much attention to: endocrine disruptors, which act like hormones, and can affect marine life very differently from other pollutants. Another problem is climate change. It will cause ocean acidification, and as the pH changes, it can have profound effects across the whole food web in ways we don’t fully understand yet. Sea level rise is another obvious result of climate change, and that would impact not just people living near the coast, but habitats near the coast — tide pools, wetlands and coastal bluffs. In some places, tide pools will disappear, and wetlands can’t migrate inland they way they would once upon a time, because people have built condos and offices there. What are the benefits of wetlands, anyway? In many places, wetl
