Today – groundwater depletion and how it’s affecting global food production. At a recent science conference, EarthSky spoke to Jay Famiglietti, director of the University of California’s Center for Hydrologic Modeling. He said he’s been using GRACE, a satellite that can trace the movement of water below ground.
Jay Famiglietti: For the first time, we’ve been able to see the ups and downs in water storage all over the planet.
Famiglietti says that, locally, he’s discovered that California’s Central Valley has lost alarming rates of groundwater. He attributes this to mostly to drought.
Jay Famiglietti: There is not as much rainfall, so there is not as much groundwater recharge. Global change is having an impact. We are not getting the snowpack that we used to get.
Famiglietti says the impact is so significant, because California is an agricultural hotbed.
Jay Famiglietti: The Central Valley is responsible for 25% of the food consumed in the United States. Without a sustainable source of water, it will be difficult to continue to grow food at the rates at which we have been growing it.
Famiglietti says he’s found evidence of increasingly parched ground all over the world. He explained that water tables are dropping significantly across northern India, one of the world’s most intensely irrigated regions. He added that, in India, over 100 million people could see this important resource literally dry up, along with their food. Famiglietti spoke more about the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite mission.
Jay Famiglietti: This mission has made very important contributions because it allows us to see the human fingerprint of water storage on the continents. Some of the water storage is natural variability, natural seasonal cycling of the water cycle. Some of it is anthropogenic, or human induced, with the groundwater withdrawal.
Y not b as effective of harvesting water like we do oil? It is a resource right? I see billions of jobs from use of global warming money and creating platforms to draw the water, and ice melting, cleaning it and shipping for use; crops, etc. Y stand & watch it dissolve. I have worked in Arctic, can see its viability
I have seen the ground water depletion in the past 25 years in the said region (Punjab,India) and its alarming …… the main reason is excessive exploration for the interests of country’s growing population and no policy is being implemented to sustain in future……if it goes on continuously it will be a disaster coz that area feeds 60 percent of India’s population
Praise Obama for shutting off the water to farmers in California, thereby conserving water.
Resources are always limited. Wants and needs are always infinite. That paradox foms the basis for the study of Economics. Groundwater is finite. Now, is food or your golfcourse your preference? Do you want a green lawn in Phoenix? Since water is, more and more, considered “everybody’s”, it is being overused for frivilous purposes. In California, water owned by the farmers is being taken by governments of cities to prmote the city life style. Most water can be cleaned up and reused but is not because all of the governments are broke and cannot afford to build new systems.
There are some hard decisions to be made. Who owns the water in question? If it belongs to everybody, you can count on shortages and insane misuse. When you have nothing to eat, what is the value of your pretty green lawn in the dessert?
This is so alarming, when you think about the implications of it all…I am seriously reconsidering filling my swimming pool this summer, although I don’t really see how much impact one swimming pool can have on the whole global scheme of things; if everybody would go one summer without filling/using swimming pools, it might make a difference for a few years. . .
Similar to the problem of overfishing or other natural resources depletion that arises from human activities, the groundwater depletion in some regions have seriously affected the ecology in the Earth.
The good news is that thousands of companies and people are coming together to start to warn people and take action on waste so as to hopefully stem this depletion further.