-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: August 12, 2007 3:09:40 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: All Over the World, the Well's Gone Dry
"The water level in Lake Superior --the deepest and coldest of
the Great Lakes, which together hold nearly 20% of the entire
world's fresh water-- has ebbed to the lowest point in eight
decades and will set a record if, as expected, it dips 3 more
inches. It has plunged more than one foot just in the past year
alone. Meanwhile its average temperature surged 4.5 degrees F
higher since 1979 ..."
WATER TABLES FALLING,
RIVERS RUNNING DRY
Lester R. Brown
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch03_ss2.htm
As the world’s demand for water has tripled over the last half-
century and as the demand for hydroelectric power has grown even
faster, dams and diversions of river water have drained many rivers
dry. As water tables fall, the springs that feed rivers go dry,
reducing river flows.
Scores of countries are overpumping aquifers as they struggle to
satisfy their growing water needs, including each of the big three
grain producers—China, India, and the United States. More than half
the world’s people live in countries where water tables are falling.
There are two types of aquifers: replenishable and nonreplenishable
(or fossil) aquifers. Most of the aquifers in India and the shallow
aquifer under the North China Plain are replenishable. When these
are depleted, the maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced
to the rate of recharge.
For fossil aquifers, such as the vast U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the
deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer,
depletion brings pumping to an end. Farmers who lose their
irrigation water have the option of returning to lower-yield
dryland farming if rainfall permits. In more arid regions, however,
such as in the southwestern United States or the Middle East, the
loss of irrigation water means the end of agriculture.
The U.S. embassy in Beijing reports that Chinese wheat farmers in
some areas are now pumping from a depth of 300 meters, or nearly
1,000 feet. Pumping water from this far down raises pumping costs
so high that farmers are often forced to abandon irrigation and
return to less productive dryland farming. A World Bank study
indicates that China is overpumping three river basins in the north—
the Hai, which flows through Beijing and Tianjin; the Yellow; and
the Huai, the next river south of the Yellow. Since it takes 1,000
tons of water to produce one ton of grain, the shortfall in the Hai
basin of nearly 40 billion tons of water per year (1 ton equals 1
cubic meter) means that when the aquifer is depleted, the grain
harvest will drop by 40 million tons—enough to feed 120 million
Chinese.
In India, water shortages are particularly serious simply because
the margin between actual food consumption and survival is so
precarious. In a survey of India’s water situation, Fred Pearce
reported in New Scientist that the 21 million wells drilled are
lowering water tables in most of the country. In North Gujarat, the
water table is falling by 6 meters (20 feet) per year. In Tamil
Nadu, a state with more than 62 million people in southern India,
wells are going dry almost everywhere and falling water tables have
dried up 95 percent of the wells owned by small farmers, reducing
the irrigated area in the state by half over the last decade.
As water tables fall, well drillers are using modified oil-drilling
technology to reach water, going as deep as 1,000 meters in some
locations. In communities where underground water sources have
dried up entirely, all agriculture is rain-fed and drinking water
is trucked in. Tushaar Shah, who heads the International Water
Management Institute’s groundwater station in Gujarat, says of
India’s water situation, “When the balloon bursts, untold anarchy
will be the lot of rural India.”
In the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports
that in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas—three leading grain-
producing states—the underground water table has dropped by more
than 30 meters (100 feet). As a result, wells have gone dry on
thousands of farms in the southern Great Plains. Although this
mining of underground water is taking a toll on U.S. grain
production, irrigated land accounts for only one fifth of the U.S.
grain harvest, compared with close to three fifths of the harvest
in India and four fifths in China.
Pakistan, a country with 158 million people that is growing by 3
million per year, is also mining its underground water. In the
Pakistani part of the fertile Punjab plain, the drop in water
tables appears to be similar to that in India. Observation wells
near the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi show a fall in the
water table between 1982 and 2000 that ranges from 1 to nearly 2
meters a year.
In the province of Baluchistan, water tables around the capital,
Quetta, are falling by 3.5 meters per year. Richard Garstang, a
water expert with the World Wildlife Fund and a participant in a
study of Pakistan’s water situation, said in 2001 that “within 15
years Quetta will run out of water if the current consumption rate
continues.”
Iran, a country of 70 million people, is overpumping its aquifers
by an average of 5 billion tons of water per year, the water
equivalent of one third of its annual grain harvest. Under the
small but agriculturally rich Chenaran Plain in northeastern Iran,
the water table was falling by 2.8 meters a year in the late 1990s.
New wells being drilled both for irrigation and to supply the
nearby city of Mashad are responsible. Villages in eastern Iran are
being abandoned as wells go dry, generating a flow of “water
refugees.”
Saudi Arabia, a country of 25 million people, is as water-poor as
it is oil-rich. Relying heavily on subsidies, it developed an
extensive irrigated agriculture based largely on its deep fossil
aquifer. After several years of using oil money to support wheat
prices at five times the world market level, the government was
forced to face fiscal reality and cut the subsidies. Its wheat
harvest dropped from a high of 4 million tons in 1992 to some 2
million tons in 2005. Some Saudi farmers are now pumping water from
wells that are 1,200 meters deep (nearly four fifths of a mile).
In neighboring Yemen, a nation of 21 million, the water table under
most of the country is falling by roughly 2 meters a year as water
use outstrips the sustainable yield of aquifers. In western Yemen’s
Sana’a Basin, the estimated annual water extraction of 224 million
tons exceeds the annual recharge of 42 million tons by a factor of
five, dropping the water table 6 meters per year. World Bank
projections indicate the Sana’a Basin—site of the national capital,
Sana’a, and home to 2 million people—will be pumped dry by 2010.
In the search for water, the Yemeni government has drilled test
wells in the basin that are 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) deep—depths
normally associated with the oil industry—but they have failed to
find water. Yemen must soon decide whether to bring water to
Sana’a, possibly by pipeline from coastal desalting plants, if it
can afford it, or to relocate the capital. Either alternative will
be costly and potentially traumatic.
Israel, even though it is a pioneer in raising irrigation water
productivity, is depleting both of its principal aquifers—the
coastal aquifer and the mountain aquifer that it shares with
Palestinians. Israel’s population, whose growth is fueled by both
natural increase and immigration, is outgrowing its water supply.
Conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians over the allocation of
water in the latter area are ongoing. Because of severe water
shortages, Israel has banned the irrigation of wheat.
In Mexico—home to a population of 107 million that is projected to
reach 140 million by 2050—the demand for water is outstripping
supply. Mexico City’s water problems are well known. Rural areas
are also suffering. For example, in the agricultural state of
Guanajuato, the water table is falling by 2 meters or more a year.
At the national level, 51 percent of all the water extracted from
underground is from aquifers that are being overpumped.
Since the overpumping of aquifers is occurring in many countries
more or less simultaneously, the depletion of aquifers and the
resulting harvest cutbacks could come at roughly the same time. And
the accelerating depletion of aquifers means this day may come
soon, creating potentially unmanageable food scarcity.
While falling water tables are largely hidden, rivers that are
drained dry before they reach the sea are highly visible. Two
rivers where this phenomenon can be seen are the Colorado, the
major river in the southwestern United States, and the Yellow, the
largest river in northern China. Other large rivers that either run
dry or are reduced to a mere trickle during the dry season are the
Nile, the lifeline of Egypt; the Indus, which supplies most of
Pakistan’s irrigation water; and the Ganges in India’s densely
populated Gangetic basin. Many smaller rivers have disappeared
entirely.
Since 1950, the number of large dams, those over 15 meters high,
has increased from 5,000 to 45,000. Each dam deprives a river of
some of its flow. Engineers like to say that dams built to generate
electricity do not take water from the river, only its energy, but
this is not entirely true since reservoirs increase evaporation.
The annual loss of water from a reservoir in arid or semiarid
regions, where evaporation rates are high, is typically equal to 10
percent of its storage capacity.
The Colorado River now rarely makes it to the sea. With the states
of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and, most important, California
depending heavily on the Colorado’s water, the river is simply
drained dry before it reaches the Gulf of California. This
excessive demand for water is destroying the river’s ecosystem,
including its fisheries.
A similar situation exists in Central Asia. The Amu Darya—which,
along with the Syr Darya, feeds the Aral Sea—is diverted to
irrigate the cotton fields of Central Asia. In the late 1980s,
water levels dropped so low that the sea split in two. While recent
efforts to revitalize the North Aral Sea have raised the water
level somewhat, the South Aral Sea will likely never recover.
China’s Yellow River, which flows some 4,000 kilometers through
five provinces before it reaches the Yellow Sea, has been under
mounting pressure for several decades. It first ran dry in 1972.
Since 1985 it has often failed to reach the sea, although better
management and greater reservoir capacity have facilitated year-
round flow in recent years.
The Nile, site of another ancient civilization, now barely makes it
to the sea. Water analyst Sandra Postel, in Pillar of Sand, notes
that before the Aswan Dam was built, some 32 billion cubic meters
of water reached the Mediterranean each year. After the dam was
completed, however, increasing irrigation, evaporation, and other
demands reduced its discharge to less than 2 billion cubic meters.
Pakistan, like Egypt, is essentially a river-based civilization,
heavily dependent on the Indus. This river, originating in the
Himalayas and flowing westward to the Indian Ocean, not only
provides surface water, it also recharges aquifers that supply the
irrigation wells dotting the Pakistani countryside. In the face of
growing water demand, it too is starting to run dry in its lower
reaches. Pakistan, with a population projected to reach 305 million
by 2050, is in trouble.
In Southeast Asia, the flow of the Mekong is being reduced by the
dams being built on its upper reaches by the Chinese. The
downstream countries, including Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Viet
Nam—countries with 168 million people—complain about the reduced
flow of the Mekong, but this has done little to curb China’s
efforts to exploit the power and the water in the river.
The same problem exists with the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which
originate in Turkey and flow through Syria and Iraq en route to the
Persian Gulf. This river system, the site of Sumer and other early
civilizations, is being overused. Large dams erected in Turkey and
Iraq have reduced water flow to the once “fertile crescent,”
helping to destroy more than 90 percent of the formerly vast
wetlands that enriched the delta region.
In the river systems just mentioned, virtually all the water in the
basin is being used. Inevitably, if people upstream use more water,
those downstream will get less. As demands continue to grow,
balancing water demand and supply is imperative. Failure to do so
means that water tables will continue to fall, more rivers will run
dry, and more lakes and wetlands will disappear.
------------------
Changing Lake Superior frustrates boaters,
mystifies scientists
John Flesher / Associated Press
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070728/METRO/
707280412
MARQUETTE -- Something seems amiss with mighty Superior, the
deepest and coldest of the Great Lakes, which together hold nearly
20 percent of the world's fresh surface water.
Superior's surface area is roughly the same as South Carolina's,
the biggest of any freshwater lake on Earth. It's deep enough to
hold all the other Great Lakes plus three additional Lake Eries.
Yet over the past year, its level has ebbed to the lowest point in
eight decades and will set a record this fall if, as expected, it
dips three more inches.
Its average temperature has surged 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since
1979, significantly above the 2.7-degree rise in the region's air
temperature during the same period. That's no small deal for a
freshwater sea that was created from glacial melt as the Ice Age
ended and remains chilly in all seasons.
A weather buoy on the western side recently recorded an "amazing"
75 degrees, "as warm a surface temperature as we've ever seen in
this lake," says Jay Austin, assistant professor at the University
of Minnesota at Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory.
Water levels also have receded on the other Great Lakes since the
late 1990s. But the suddenness and severity of Superior's changes
worry many in the region; it has plunged more than a foot in the
past year. Shorelines are dozens of yards wider than usual, giving
sunbathers wider beaches but also exposing mucky bottomlands and
rotting vegetation.
"C'mon, girls, get out of the mud," Dan Arsenault, 32, calls to his
two young daughters at a park near the mouth of the St. Marys River
on the southeastern end of Lake Superior. Bree, 5, and 3-year-old
Andie are stomping in puddles where water was waist-deep a couple
of years ago. The floatation rope that previously designated the
swimming area now rests on moist ground.
"This is the lowest I've ever seen it," says Arsenault, a lifelong
resident of Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Superior still has lots of water. Its average depth is 483 feet and
it reaches 1,332 feet at the deepest point. Erie, the shallowest
Great Lake, is 210 feet at its deepest and averages only 62 feet.
Lake Michigan averages 279 feet and is 925 feet at its deepest.
Yet along Superior's shores, boats can't reach many mooring sites
and marina operators are begging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
to dredge shallow harbors. Ferry service between Grand Portage,
Minn., and Isle Royale National Park was scaled back because one of
the company's boats couldn't dock.
Sally Zabelka has turned away boaters from Chippewa Landing marina
in the eastern Upper Peninsula, where not long ago 27-foot vessels
easily made their way up the channel from the lake's Brimley Bay.
"In essence, our dock is useless this year," she says.
Another worry: As the bay heats up, the perch, walleye and
smallmouth bass that have lured anglers to her campground and
tackle shop are migrating to cooler waters in the open lake.
Low water has cost the shipping industry millions of dollars.
Vessels are carrying lighter loads of iron ore and coal to avoid
running aground in shallow channels.
Superior's retreat creates a double whammy in Grand Marais, where
the only deepwater harbor of refuge along a 90-mile, shipwreck-
strewn section of the lake already was filling with sand because of
a decaying breakwall.
Burt Township, the local government, is extending the harbor's boat
launching ramp an additional 40 feet, Supervisor Jack Hubbard says.
Sand and shallow water are choking off aquatic vegetation that once
provided habitat for hefty pike and trout.
Puffing on a pipe in a Grand Marais pub, retiree Ted Sietsema
voices the suspicion held by many in the villages along Superior's
southern shoreline: Someone is taking the water. The government is
diverting it to places with more people and political influence --
along Lakes Huron and Michigan and even the Sun Belt, via the
Mississippi River.
"Don't give me that global warming stuff," Sietsema says. "That
water is going west. That big aquifer out there is empty but they
can still water the desert. It's got to be coming from somewhere."
A familiar theory -- but all wet, says Scott Thieme, hydraulics and
hydrology chief with the Corps of Engineers district office in
Detroit. Water does exit Lake Superior through locks, power plants
and gates on the St. Marys River, but in amounts strictly regulated
under a 1909 pact with Canada.
The actual forces at work, while mysterious, are not the stuff of
spy novels, Thieme says.
Precipitation has tapered off across the upper Great Lakes since
the 1970s and is nearly 6 inches below normal in the Superior
watershed the past year. Water evaporation rates are up sharply
because mild winters have shrunk the winter ice cap -- just as
climate change computer models predict for the next half-century.
Yet those models also envision more precipitation as global warming
sets in, says Brent Lofgren, a physical scientist with the Great
Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. Instead
there's drought, suggesting other causes.
Cynthia Sellinger, the lab's deputy director, suspects residual
effects of El Nino, the warming of equatorial Pacific waters that
produced warmer winters in the late 1990s, just as the lakes began
receding.
Both long-term climate change and short-term meteorological factors
may be driving water levels down, says Urban, the Michigan Tech
researcher.
But he and Austin are more concerned about effects than causes.
There's a big knowledge gap about how food webs and other aquatic
systems will respond to warmer temperatures, they say.
"It's just not clear what the ultimate result will be as we turn
the knob up," says Austin, the Minnesota-Duluth professor. "It
could be great for fisheries or fisheries could crash."
That's a question Urban and his colleagues want to help answer with
their carbon dioxide measurements on Lake Superior. Plugging those
and other statistics into comprehensive ecosystem models will give
scientists a basis for making predictions.
"We're always reacting to what's already happened instead of
looking forward," Urban says. "As long as we have a poor
understanding of the basic functions of the lake, we won't be able
to say whether this warming is of major concern or not."
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