Angela Morelli on the water footprint of humanity

Maybe Angela Morelli's speech at TEDxOslo will stirr up some discussions...

The water footprint of humanity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8YHa1W_neI

Other work by Angela Morelli:

The water we eat:

http://www.angelamorelli.com/1/?projects=virtual-water-an-infographic-story

or the direct link:

http://www.angelamorelli.com/water/

2 Answers

1. Dear Aamir, the methodology to determine the water footprint of crops is described in the Water Footprint Assessment Manual (http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/WaterFootprintAssessmentManual). If you have all required data on water consumption, pollution and yield, then the equations given therein will suffice. If you have to rely on modelling for the determination of the crop wf then you may want to use e.g. AquaCrop of FAO (http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquacrop.html). Just one model of many, but maybe suited for your needs. The Water Footprint Assessment Tool (http://www.waterfootprint.org/tool/home/) may be useful for a first rough estimate - I am saying rough estimate, since to date you can not compute your own results, but retrieve average data for 1996-2005 with the tool. This will change, but does not help you now. But a first estimate can be retrieved. Examples of case studies such as the one you are about to carry out can be found on the publications page of the Water Footprint Network: http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/Publications . I hope this helps. Please let me know if you need more information. Regards, Markus

2. Dear Markus, i want to calculate water footprint of different crops for my project, can you guide me please. Can you share some documents or tools which will help me doing this ? thanks in advance..cheers.