FRANCE: Drought-stricken California is not the only place draining underground aquifers in the hunt for fresh water.
It’s happening across the world, according to two studies by United States researchers made public yesterday.
Twenty-one of the world’s 37 largest aquifers – in locations from India and China to the United States and France – have passed their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water is being removed than replaced from these vital underground reservoirs.
Thirteen of 37 aquifers fell at rates that put them into the most troubled category.
“The situation is quite critical,” said Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the studies’ principal investigator.
And it’s difficult to see it getting better soon. These groundwater reserves take thousands of years to accumulate and only slowly recharge with water from snowmelt and rains.
Now, as drilling for water has taken off across the globe, the hidden water reservoirs are being stressed.
Underground aquifers supply 35 per cent of the water used by humans worldwide. Demand is even greater in times of drought.
Rain-starved California is currently tapping aquifers for 60 per cent of its water use, up from the usual 40 per cent.
In another finding from the studies led by the University of California Irvine, scientists say some of these aquifers may be much smaller than previously thought.
Only a few of the aquifers have been mapped in detail and most estimates of aquifer water reserves have “uncertainty ranges across orders of magnitude”, according to the studies.
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