The temperature is rising and the ice is melting, pouring hundreds of litres of water into the rivers today. But what about tomorrow? In order to better anticipate the consequences of melting glaciers on the availability of water resources, hydrologists are trying to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of these immense glacial masses.
Irrigate crops with wastewater? Installing connected water meters for farmers? Researchers are exploring these avenues to preserve the water resources of which the agricultural sector is a major consumer.
What if the most important thing was actually invisible to the eye? In France, around 75% of the water we consume comes from groundwater. At a time when water crises are looming, don't these large reservoirs called aquifers represent a manna that is too little known and under-exploited? Between ignorance here and ecological risks elsewhere, the sustainable exploitation of aquifers is still to be done.
For this last issue of A LUM la science before the summer, Mircea Sofonea, epidemiologist at the Mivegec laboratory, gives us an update on the seventh wave of Covid. This is an opportunity to look back at the media treatment of the pandemic and the prospects for research.
There is life on the glaciers. A cryobiodiversity that is still poorly understood and that could well disappear before it has even revealed all its secrets. Because with each retreat, the glaciers are inexorably dying out. The "Life without ice" project aims to understand this phenomenon in all its dimensions.
Forgotten by the media for several weeks, the Covid epidemic is back in the news with the BA.4 and BA.5 variants taking hold in France, after their breakthrough in Portugal in particular.