More than half of the world's largest lakes have declined over the past three decades. Main causes of the decline in water reserves: human activity, but also climate change, including the lack of precipitation and rising temperatures that accelerate the evaporation of resources.
The drying up of natural lakes or reservoirs is all the more worrying because they represent 87% of the liquid fresh water available on earth. "Clearly, the footprint of climate change is already there," says the researcher who led the study.