Groundwater depletion in semiarid regions of Texas and California threatens US food security

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/uota-gdi052412.php

[font face=Serif]Public release date: 28-May-2012

Contact: Marc Airhart
[e-mail]
512-471-2241
University of Texas at Austin

[font size=5]Groundwater depletion in semiarid regions of Texas and California threatens US food security[/font]

[font size=3]The nation's food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere.

[font size=2]Caption: Groundwater depletion has been most severe in the purple areas indicated on these maps of (A) the High Plains and (B) California's Central Valley. These heavily affected areas are concentrated in parts of the Texas Panhandle, western Kansas, and the Tulare Basin in California's Central Valley. Changes in groundwater levels in (A) are adapted from a 2009 report by the US Geological Survey and in (B) from a 1989 report by the USGS.

Credit: US Geological Survey[/font]

The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paints the highest resolution picture yet of how groundwater depletion varies across space and time in California's Central Valley and the High Plains of the central U.S. Researchers hope this information will enable more sustainable use of water in these areas, although they think irrigated agriculture may be unsustainable in some parts.

"We're already seeing changes in both areas," said Bridget Scanlon, senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology and lead author of the study. "We're seeing decreases in rural populations in the High Plains. Increasing urbanization is replacing farms in the Central Valley. And during droughts some farmers are forced to fallow their land. These trends will only accelerate as water scarcity issues become more severe."

Three results of the new study are particularly striking: First, during the most recent drought in California's Central Valley, from 2006 to 2009, farmers in the south depleted enough groundwater to fill the nation's largest man-made reservoir, Lake Mead near Las Vegas—a level of groundwater depletion that is unsustainable at current recharge rates. Second, a third of the groundwater depletion in the High Plains occurs in just 4% of the land area. And third, the researchers project that if current trends continue some parts of the southern High Plains that currently support irrigated agriculture, mostly in the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas, will be unable to do so within a few decades.

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http://mediasite.beg.utexas.edu/Media/Viewer/?peid=db5b2098eddd495c89fcce2abdd35635

[zbdent]

1. Isn't that graphic in (A) reminiscent of the Keystone Pipeline path?

Where the delineated areas are what might be affected by a massive leak of the oil pipeline?

[Nihil]

2. Oh that's alright then ...

... at least the aquifer will be empty by the time that the oil spills seep down
that far ... oh, wait ...