aquifer depletion Articles
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Combining economic policy instruments with desalinisation to reduce overdraft in the Spanish Alto Guadalentín aquifer
This paper analyses the cost-effectiveness of combining several economic policy instruments to address the problem of non-renewable pumping in the Alto Guadalentín aquifer in southeastern Spain, one of the most extreme cases of aquifer depletion in Europe. Our results show that all instruments have significant economic impacts. However, the future availability of desalinisation would notably ...
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Land Subsidence Threatens 21% of Major Cities Worldwide
Acting to slow depletion of aquifers through efficiency and recharge could reduce economic exposure Land subsidence is a loss of elevation usually due to aquifer depletion. Despite major socioeconomic impacts, the rapidly increasing problem hasn’t been adequately studied. A recent study of subsidence in 200 locations across 34 countries, however, has revealed huge negative impacts and the ...
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Depleting groundwater – an opportunity for flood storage? A case study from part of the Ganges River basin, India
Storing excess rainwater underground can become key in mitigating the frequency and magnitude of flood events. In this context, assessment of depleted groundwater storage that can be refilled in water surplus periods is imperative. The study uses Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data to identify variations in groundwater storage in the monsoonal Ramganga River basin (tributary ...
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What is Water-Sensitive Urban Design?
Designing the urban landscape to preserve water resources is becoming more important as climate change progresses Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) is an approach to urban planning that integrates sustainable urban water-cycle management into the built environment to achieve positive ecological and sociocultural outcomes. Its strategies, such as stormwater reuse and water-efficient ...
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California Focusing on Groundwater Recharge
Depleted aquifers provide storage for surplus precipitation during wet seasons “The effects of climate change are necessitating wholesale changes in how water is managed in California,” announced the state’s Department of Water Resources in June 2018. The long-term forecast calls for more frequent drought years, but also for years that dump more precipitation on the state than ...
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Fighting Saline Intrusion With Desalination
30 years of data show salinity of groundwater increasing even far from coasts After 30 years of monitoring wells, the latest U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research shows groundwater across the nation is becoming saltier. It has long been known that seawater can intrude when coastal aquifers become depleted and sea levels rise, but the most recent research throws light on saline intrusion far ...
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Balancing Sustainable Groundwater Use and Crop Yields
Strategies like managed aquifer recharge can help strike a balance between crop yields and groundwater preservation In the United States, the production of three key crops relies heavily on irrigation, but in some regions, groundwater use for irrigation far outpaces natural aquifer recharge rates. As aquifers are depleted, a number of ill effects follow. Ultimately, they may provide less water ...
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Americans Drilling Deeper for Groundwater
The practice is widespread, but ultimately unsustainable Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara have completed an ambitious analysis of decades of data on 11.8 million water wells in the United States and determined that Americans are drilling deeper for groundwater than ever before. They focused on areas around the nation known to be heavily dependent on groundwater, ...
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Satellite Mission Tracks Freshwater Trends
NASA GRACE is showing that the wet are getting wetter and the dry are getting drier Accurate observation of the availability of fresh water is a valuable tool when it comes to forecasting global food supplies, health levels, energy supplies, and consequent social upheavals. But, tracking changes in the world’s hydrology has proven difficult with on-site measurement alone. The negatives ...
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Falling water tables` knock-on effect on falling harvests
Scores of countries are overpumping aquifers as they struggle to satisfy their growing water needs. The drilling of millions of irrigation wells has pushed water withdrawals beyond recharge rates, in effect leading to groundwater mining. The failure of governments to limit pumping to the sustainable yield of aquifers means that water tables are now falling in countries that contain more than half ...
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Many Indian Cities May Soon Run Out of Water
National policy commission is guiding states with sustainable development goals The Indian government’s prestigious National Institution for Transforming India policy commission (NITI Aayog) has released a report that warns that as demand continues to skyrocket, 21 Indian cities will run out of groundwater by 2020 without adequate countermeasures. By 2030, demand is expected to increase ...
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Stanford Researchers Link Aquifer Overdraft to Arsenic Contamination
In a recent study, researchers used satellite data to establish a link between excessive pumping from California aquifers and dangerous arsenic concentration spikes in the groundwater of the Tulare Basin. This promises to be an important early warning system for the growing problem of arsenic contamination, which potentially threatens drinking water for more than a million people. Arsenic cannot ...
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Undersea storage for US carbon emissions
Researchers are working hard on methods to mitigate, reduce or compensate for CO2 emissions. One of these, geological carbon sequestration, involves injecting CO2 into deep saline aquifers, or depleted oil and gas reservoirs so that it is not released into the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming. Now US researchers have found a potential new location for undersea CO2 storage, which ...
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What is an Aquifer?
Aquifers are natural formations that store groundwater, but these vital structures are threatened The word “aquifer” means “water bearer.” In the context of hydrogeology, it refers to a natural underground formation of permeable rock or sediment that stores and conducts the groundwater we access through wells and springs. A healthy aquifer not only supplies water, but ...
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Cities Around the World Face Water Supply ‘Day Zeros’
Drought, pollution, and overpopulation add to the chance that taps will one day run dry International attention has focused on Cape Town South Africa’s water crisis with the approach of “Day Zero,” when the taps of a modern city may for the first time run dry. Regardless of whether Day Zero comes or whether preparations will avert catastrophe, the specter of Day Zero has ...
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How food production impacts global groundwater supplies
The ever-increasing global trade in food is accelerating groundwater depletion in many areas of the world, emptying aquifers faster than they can be naturally recharged, according to newly released research. Although groundwater depletion is a well-known and frequently studied issue, the new research focuses on how groundwater supplies are affected by international trade. Agricultural product ...
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The rising tide of environmental refugees
Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the biologically productive land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Mounting population densities, once generated solely by population growth, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of deserts and may soon be affected by the projected rise in sea ...
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Managed Aquifer Recharge
As water demand increases, recycled water can be used to maintain groundwater levels In recent years, groundwater stored in key aquifers has become rapidly depleted. This is due not only to demand, but also to technological advances — notably the introduction of the rotary drill in the 1880s and the submersible electric water pump in the 1960s — that have increased exploitation of ...
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Drought Hits Rainy England
As it stretches into second year, low rainfall is threatening agriculture and wildlife The gray, rainy climate of England has long been considered a stable if monotonous feature. But a drought, in the middle of its second year, is bringing plentiful sunny days tinged by worries that climate change may parch “England’s green and pleasant land.” Dying Native Trees The effects ...
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Can Texas Floodwaters Be Used for Aquifer Recharge?
A study has found stormwater that washes to the Gulf could replenish aquifers — if it can be caught and stored Flooding in Texas has long punctuated the state’s history, even entering into popular culture. But even though Texas may be legendary for getting its share of rain, the volume of Texas stormwater had never actually been quantified before. A new University of Texas study, ...
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