{"id":9995,"date":"2015-07-13T06:28:40","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T11:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9995"},"modified":"2015-07-13T06:28:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T11:28:40","slug":"with-one-third-of-largest-aquifers-highly-stressed-its-time-to-explore-and-assess-the-planets-groundwater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9995","title":{"rendered":"With One-Third of Largest Aquifers Highly Stressed, It\u2019s Time to Explore and Assess the Planet\u2019s Groundwater"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_163285\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\">\n<h3 class=\"title entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/voices.nationalgeographic.com\/2015\/07\/09\/with-one-third-of-largest-aquifers-highly-stressed-its-time-to-explore-and-assess-the-planets-groundwater\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">With One-Third of Largest Aquifers Highly Stressed, It\u2019s Time to Explore and Assess the Planet\u2019s Groundwater<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-163285\" src=\"http:\/\/voices.nationalgeographic.com\/files\/2015\/07\/grace_NASA.jpg\" alt=\"NASA\u2019s twin-satellite mission known as GRACE has helped scientists estimate how much water is being depleted from the world\u2019s major aquifers, but there is great uncertainty about how much water these aquifers hold. Image courtesy of NASA.\" width=\"1000\" height=\"737\" \/><figcaption id=\"figcaption_attachment_163285\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA\u2019s twin-satellite mission known as GRACE has helped scientists estimate how much water is being depleted from the world\u2019s major aquifers, but there is great uncertainty about how much water these aquifers hold. Image courtesy of NASA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Imagine if your bank statement arrived each month and told you how much money you had withdrawn and deposited, but told you nothing about how much money you had at the beginning or end of the month.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019d know whether your balance had grown or shrunk, but you\u2019d have no idea whether you could afford to buy a new house, take a vacation, or make it through that last year of college without bussing tables on the weekends.<\/p>\n<p>This is pretty much the state we\u2019re in with the world\u2019s groundwater accounts, which supply 2 billion people with drinking water and irrigate a large share of the world\u2019s food.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[I]n most cases, we do not know how much groundwater exists in storage,\u201d write the authors of a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/2015WR017351\/abstract\">study<\/a>\u00a0published last month in\u00a0<em>Water Resources Research<\/em>\u00a0(WRR), a journal of the American Geophysical Union.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, we\u2019re clueless about how long we can keep drawing down these water reserves before they run out.<\/p>\n<p>And we are indeed drawing many of them down.<\/p>\n<p>One-third of the world\u2019s 37 largest aquifers are highly stressed to over-stressed, according to a companion\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/2015WR017349\/abstract\">study<\/a>\u00a0published in the same issue of WRR. The eight most highly stressed aquifers receive almost no natural recharge to offset human use \u2013 including aquifers in Saudi Arabia, northwestern India and Pakistan.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists at the University of California at Irvine led both studies, with doctoral student Alexandra Richey serving as lead author. Other team members came from NASA, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Taiwan University and UC Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With One-Third of Largest Aquifers Highly Stressed, It\u2019s Time to Explore and Assess the Planet\u2019s Groundwater NASA\u2019s twin-satellite mission known as GRACE has helped scientists estimate how much water is being depleted from the world\u2019s major aquifers, but there is great uncertainty about how much water these aquifers hold. Image courtesy of NASA. Imagine if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7253,220,4208,929,7018,7019,866,7255,7254],"class_list":["post-9995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-aquifer","tag-drought","tag-groundwater","tag-nasa","tag-national-geographic","tag-sandra-postel","tag-water","tag-water-resources-research","tag-water-stress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9996,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9995\/revisions\/9996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}