In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

[Karlston]

In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes

Shallow wells could dry up, but deep wells have their own problems.

Enlarge / An irrigation system working in a field of soybeans. As surface water becomes less reliable in the face of climate change, groundwater will become an increasingly crucial resource.

flickr user: Nic McPhee

Groundwater is an "invisible resource," writes environmental engineer Debra Perrone. It "flows slowly under our feet through cracks in rocks and spaces in sediments," she says, contrasting it with the more visible and obvious dams and rivers on the surface. This invisible resource is a quiet hero, supplying around a quarter of the US' daily freshwater needs.

 

Its distributed nature makes groundwater a challenging resource to manage. Unlike on the surface, where we can manage through public infrastructure like dams and reservoirs, groundwater is mostly tapped through millions of wells drilled by individuals, businesses, and farms. But current levels of groundwater use are not sustainable: resources are being steadily depleted as groundwater use outpaces natural replenishment.

 

This depletion means that shallower wells may run dry. Across the US, people are drilling deeper and deeper wells, report Perrone and her colleague Scott Jasechko in a paper in Nature Sustainability this week. That suggests that the easy-to-access water is already vanishing. But it's also not sustainable to keep going deeper.

Where the wells are

Perrone and Jasechko drew on 64 state-, regional- or county-level public databases recording the construction of wells, allowing them to pull together a database of nearly 12 million wells in the US. They looked across five large systems of water-carrying rock layers, called aquifers: the High Plains aquifer in the Central US and aquifer systems in California's Central Valley, Florida, the Mississippi embayment, and the Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain.

 

They found that wells across the US have generally been getting deeper since 1950. This trend toward deeper wells showed up across the majority of areas that were included in the database. Deeper wells and depleting groundwater may be related, but it's not necessarily that simple. There are other reasons why people might drill deeper wells—to avoid contamination in shallower wells, for example, or because improved technology or laxer legislation makes it possible where it wasn't before.

 

And even if people would like to drill deeper as shallower wells dry up, it's not always possible: as you drill deeper, groundwater may no longer be high quality or may not be as easy to extract in useful quantities.

 

To explore the relationship between groundwater depletion and deepening wells, the researchers used data on groundwater levels from the US Geological Survey. They found different patterns in different regions: for example, while depletion and well depth seemed to be moving in concert in California's Central Valley, the same was not true in the Floridan and North Atlantic Coastal Plain aquifers. The complex and varying features of different aquifers probably make deepening a viable response in some places but not others.

Deeper isn’t a long-term answer

Although shallower wells are at risk of drying out, drilling deeper comes with a host of concerns. For one thing, it's expensive: it may be an option available to some users, but it's not possible for everyone. It's also more energy-intensive to pump water from deeper wells, meaning that a trend toward deeper wells would likely increase the energy cost and carbon emissions of groundwater use.

 

Finally, there's just a limit to how far it's possible to go—because of poor-quality water at very deep levels, as well as the difficulty of extracting useful amounts of water in certain kinds of rock layers.

 

This study looks at the US, but this is really a global issue, the authors write. Not only is the US one of the world's largest food exporters (with a great deal of that food reliant on groundwater), but similar dynamics will be at play in other countries that rely on depleting groundwater, including China and India.

 

Ultimately, better management of this crucial resource requires data, which in turn can help to inform policy. That kind of policy is likely to become increasingly important as the climate crisis changes rainfall patterns: groundwater resources, write Perrone and Jasechko, "may become increasingly valuable because they are generally more resilient to short-term climate variations than surface waters."

 

 

 

Source: In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes (Ars Technica)

[Jogs]

Its something that's happening all over the World not only in U.S..

In the past people would dig wells with hand and they would get water easily, but now we need more and more powerful machines so that we can go deeper.

 

[rasbridge]

"Effects of Human Overpopulation"

https://www.everythingconnects.org/overpopulation-effects.html

[nIGHT]

When too many people dug deep wells to extract water, the lands also sink from too much water depletion.
This is what happens on some (part of some) countries were low lands been under flood from sea water due to heavy extraction of water from deep wells.

[Infinite_Vision]

Here is the problem.  Those ground water or aquifers are being depleted due to agriculture.  The Great Plains and California's Central Valley are very similar in water usage due to agriculture.  These aquifers have been here before human beings every came to the continent.  I read one study where they stated that these aquifers will eventually run out in the year 2050 or so.  As the global population grows, we requires more food to feed more people and so we will be using more water.  What they need somehow is to store more of these rain water especially this year as we can see from the flooding.  

 

One solution is to use better water management system, better and bigger underground storage of water, plant crops that doesn't require as much water, etc.  If people of Africa every get together, there is a big aquifer at the lower part of the Sahara desert.  That aquifer can help grow crops and feed the people of Africa for a while and it can turn part of the Sahara into a beautiful oasis.      

[steven36]

5 hours ago, Infinite_Vision said:

Here is the problem.  Those ground water or aquifers are being depleted due to agriculture.  The Great Plains and California's Central Valley are very similar in water usage due to agriculture.  These aquifers have been here before human beings every came to the continent.  I read one study where they stated that these aquifers will eventually run out in the year 2050 or so.  As the global population grows, we requires more food to feed more people and so we will be using more water.  What they need somehow is to store more of these rain water especially this year as we can see from the flooding.  

 

One solution is to use better water management system, better and bigger underground storage of water, plant crops that doesn't require as much water, etc.  If people of Africa every get together, there is a big aquifer at the lower part of the Sahara desert.  That aquifer can help grow crops and feed the people of Africa for a while and it can turn part of the Sahara into a beautiful oasis.      

Rice  takes up 29 percent of the groundwater and in the USA  people don't even eat that much rice like they do in other countries . , Most of the ground water gets sucked up from importing food and cotton , in California  they passed a Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014 it's going take 27 years to even figure out were there at with ground water. Research always  takes too long.

 

On 7/26/2019 at 3:13 AM, Jogs said:

ts something that's happening all over the World not only in U.S..

That's true but  certain countries it effects worse India being the 2nd biggest  the USA being the 3rd biggest  importers of food countries that depends on imports will suffer .

 

Pakistan, the United States and India, for example, account for two-thirds of all exported crops irrigated with nonrenewable groundwater.

Countries in arid and semi-arid regions that rely heavily on imported goods — like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — would have the most difficulty getting access to food should groundwater run out and potentially create a global food shortage. In other scenarios, countries such as the U.S., China, Mexico and Iran, all major food producers and importers, would take a hit both in the amount of food they can produce as well as in a drop in the global food supply. U.S. exports to China, Mexico and Japan — largely cotton, wheat, maize and soybeans — are depleting most of the country’s groundwater supply for crops.

 

Most ground water is too nasty to drink unless it comes from a natural spring, so it used for crops if  the water starts running out places will  have no choice but to cut back on imports ,

 

This article explains it better .

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/global-groundwater-disappears-rice-wheat-international-crops-may-start-vanish

 

The OP says digging Deep Wells is not answer but they are in the short term  to figure   out a solution is not simple it takes many years of research .  If they stop using Deep Wells it's going cause other countries problems more than it it will in the places were it's grown .

 

Also they many places were they could grow food but they don't , people don't even farm like they use to 20 years ago . Most kids  today don't know nothing about growing food my granddad tech me  how to grow my own food. It's the big farms   that do it mostly  for imports that causing it. in certain places in the USA and rest of the World  . More problems caused by free trade if we didn't have free trade they wouldn't be such problems . The problem is today people are spoiled they think they have to have everything and the environment suffers from it. 

[Jogs]

There's a simple solution, Work Less Eat Less.

[steven36]

51 minutes ago, Jogs said:

There's a simple solution, Work Less Eat Less.

The problem is today many don't work and they still eat ,  Back in the 1930s if you didn't work and grow your own food and raise your own live stock you didn't eat . Now everyone thanks being online studying tech is going to feed  them,  siting on there butt is not going to  put seeds in the ground . If everyone done there share of the work  and looked out for others they would be plenty  meanwhile the crop fields are bare,  while people think of new ways of being lazy. one day history going repeat itself and no one is going help them unless they help themselves. People use to be happy just having some beans , potatoes and bread  that all they had and they worked from sun up till sun down just so they could eat. If you got fresh vegetables it was in the summer during growing season  and people can there own food  they didn't  have money to go to the store to buy it . Now the government hands out food stamps  while people do nothing.

[Infinite_Vision]

Steven36, the US do export a lot of Soybeans but import various foods as well.  I read one study where all the food that are wasted in the US could actual feed the entire world.  For example, fruits and vegetables that sits in the supermarket shelves for a while and it rots.  California is their own worse enemy.  They have all of these regulations in place and it is hard to even do anything there.  If you want a plastic bag, you pay x amount.  The problem is that California is like what the 10th largest economy in the world with a high state income tax.  With all of that money, you would think they would be able to resolve a lot of their various issues like water shortage.  But nope.

 

A good country to look at for example is Israel.  They have spent money on building I think about five desalination plants producing water for the country and it's agriculture sector.  They have transform the dry climate into a lush green oasis.  You can even get produce from Israel now too.  I read that they are selling their extra water supply to neighboring country like Jordan.  With the right plan and governmental institution in place, a country can be self sufficient in water.  The differences between California and Israel is like night and day.  

 

My prediction for the future is this.  As the population of the Earth rises, it will get to a point where the Earth can only produce so much food to feed certain billions of people.  What is that number, I do not know.  If we don't do anything by the end of this century, we are doom.  The food shortage will cause feminine and starvation from third world countries first.  As the climate changes either by the Earth's transitioning to it's various cycles or by man made emissions, we will likely see wide weather patterns.  This year it was the flooding in the Midwest and we still don't know the extent of the crop losses yet.  I know one thing, food prices will rise because of these losses.  Corn might go up too.  Another thing is the over harvesting of fishes and various sea lifes.  They cannot reproduce fast enough and we are consuming them everyday.  Blue-fin tuna is an example as they have been getting smaller and smaller due to over harvesting.  Once the shortage of food start to climb plus a combination of feminine due to climate changes, we will start to see mass riots.  These mass riots will give government more incentives to enable more laws to rein in the masses.  That is my outlook in the future.           

[Ha91]

Beef, rice, avacados and soybeans take up a lot of water to grow.

Agriculture takes about a third of our emissions and if we started to use efficient methods to go about it then we'd be quite safer.

Other than that, human-caused emissions - from industrialisation and urbanization - is over a third of all emissions and we all need to start valuing and appreciating of what we currently have before we loose it all.

Efficiency, empathy and respect is all that we need to do exert on ourselves - not on nature. We owe ourselves a revision - a reflection of sorts - to help us get out of the puddle that we made ourselves...

If only this idea got heard and majority could connect with it.

PEople from small islands like that of mine are suffering the most and people don't even realise that we exist.

[mkc21]

just yesterday I started watching a documentary called Mirage, I understand that americans waste a lot of water too