Every night, somewhere unseen across the vast, semidesert and dry savanna habitat of Southern Africa, the continent’s deadliest cat emerges to hunt. Black-footed cats (Felis nigripes) are ideally suited for…
Unstudied at sea until recently, this huge, fast-moving ocean current may hold a key to resolving climate change uncertainties. But doing remote research in southern oceans poses financial, data gathering, and unexpected challenges.
Freshwater’s life-giving benefits are being gravely threatened by humanity’s manipulations of the hydrological cycle, impacting the climate and biodiversity, and undermining Earth’s operating system.
A reassessment by an international group of scientists finds that human-caused destabilization of the water cycle is seriously impacting global soil moisture, with knock on effects for forests and other ecosystems.
Dams fragment rivers, endanger aquatic species, emit large amounts of carbon and methane, cause deforestation, and hurt traditional communities, but we still need their benefits. Scientific management may be the answer.
Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD), a holistic sustainable approach to water management, could give the world’s cities a viable means of dealing with the climatic shocks ahead. Cape Town and Singapore point the way.
Petro Kotzé is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa. She writes about water, conservation and the science behind it. She has written for the Reuters Foundation, Earth Island Journal, Hakai Magazine and other publications. 
