Groundwater could be depleted sooner than we think, US study finds

The University of California in the US recently released its findings of a new study that showed the groundwater supply that many farms, industries, cities and homes depended on throughout the world had been depleting faster over the past couple of decades compared with the past 40 years.

Scott Jasecho, a professor of water resources at the university and lead author of the study, said in a statement that the study, published in showed that the declines were most notable in dry regions with extensive cropland.

However, he added that the study was not all bad news, and that the research had led the team to find several examples of aquifers that had successfully recovered due to changes in water policy management. The university said it had decided to conduct the research due to overpumping in large areas in the US. The researchers analysed groundwater data from 170 000 wells and nearly 1 700 aquifers across more than 40 countries that cover 75% of all groundwater withdrawals.

“For about a third of the aquifers they mapped, they were able to analyse groundwater trends from this century and compare them to levels from the 1980s and 1990s,” AP News reported.

According to the study, this comparison yielded a more robust global picture of underground water supplies and how farms, and to a lesser extent cities and industries, are straining the resource almost everywhere.

“It also points to how governments aren’t doing enough to regulate groundwater.”

Jasecho said depletion today was more severe than in the 1980s and 1990s.

The data showed that aquifers in Mexico and parts of the US, for example, were vulnerable to groundwater depletion due to the lack of rain. –

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS An irrigation pump system that relies on groundwater.