The water that comes out of your faucet, the water that’s unnecessarily stuffed into disposable bottles, the water that helps grow crops in your refrigerator, all of it could be coming from an aquifer somewhere. These are layers of underground material that hold water and are made up of porous rocks and sediments such as sand and gravel. When it rains, some of the water collects in lakes and rivers and eventually flows out to the ocean, but some of it percolates deep into the earth and accumulates in these underground reservoirs.
We tap into aquifers by digging shallow wells and digging deeper boreholes to water our civilization, but their extraction has gotten out of hand.surprising new facts paper Published in today’s magazine Nature We looked at available data on 1,700 aquifer systems around the world and found that 71 percent of them are experiencing groundwater decline. More than two-thirds of these aquifers are losing 0.1 meters (0.33 feet) per year, and 12% are losing at a rate of 0.5 meters. (Think of this decline like looking into a well and coming back the next year to find the water level has dropped 0.1 meter.) Nearly one-third of the aquifer has been affected. Masu. accelerated This means that declines are accelerating, especially in regions with drier climates and heavy agriculture that needs water supplies.
“Real-world observations (300 million observations made in hundreds of thousands of wells around the world) show two major findings,” said co-lead author of the new paper UC Santa. says Scott Jasechko, a water scientist at UW-Barbara. “Firstly, the rapid depletion of groundwater is unfortunately widespread all over the world, especially in arid places where agricultural land is widespread. And secondly, and even worse, the disproportionate decline in groundwater Groundwater depletion has actually accelerated over the past 40 years.
Aquifers are supposed to be reliable banks of water that are safely confined underground where the liquid does not easily evaporate. These are rainy day funds, or more precisely dry day funds, that are available when needed, such as during times of drought. But from Chile to Afghanistan to India to China and back to the United States, humans are emptying these waters at an unsustainable pace. (In the map below, dark red indicates groundwater loss of 1 meter per year; light red indicates less loss.) An already dry climate is becoming even drier due to climate change. In regions, people have less groundwater to rely on, forcing them to over-extract aquifers.
Illustration: Scott Jasechko/UCSB