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Time is running out for sand

Sand and gravel are being extracted faster than they can be replaced. Monitor and manage this resource globally, urge Mette Bendixen and colleagues.
By
  1. Mette Bendixen

    1. Mette Bendixen is a research fellow at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.

  2. Jim Best

    1. Jim Best is Threet professor of sedimentary geology and professor of geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, USA.

  3. Chris Hackney

    1. Chris Hackney is a research fellow in the Energy and Environment Institute at the University of Hull, UK.

  4. Lars Lønsmann Iversen

    1. Lars Lønsmann Iversen is a research fellow at the School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA.

A labourer carries away large basket of wet sand that has been dug from the seafloor of the Lagos Lagoon.

In Lagos Lagoon in Nigeria, labourers dig sand from the sea floor by hand. Credit: Robin Hammond/Panos

What links the building you live in, the glass you drink from and the computer you work on? Sand. It is a key ingredient of modern life and yet, astonishingly, no-one knows how much sand there is or how much is being mined.

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Nature 571, 29-31 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02042-4

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