Irrigation
pgleick | November 5, 2014The most important trend in the use of water is the slowly unfolding story of peak water in the United States and elsewhere. Data on US water use are compiled every five years by the US Geological Survey, covering every state and every sector of the economy. The latest data – for 2010 – have just been released, and they show the continuation and acceleration of a stunning trend: US water withdrawals, for all purposes, are declining, not growing.
Traditional water planning and management assume inevitable, continuing, lockstep growth in demand for water as populations and economies expand.…
jhalper | July 21, 2014Do you know the real price of a piece of beef? Here is a nice, round number to chew on: The environmental cost of beef is ten times that of dairy, eggs or poultry. This means that if you chose to eat a steak over an omelet, (assuming they have equal amounts of protein) the ecological footprint of your meal will go from a size 5 to a size 50.
Drs. Ron Milo, Gidon Eshel, research students Alon Shepon and Tamar Makov realized that even though we might try to make the right choices in our diets, we’re likely to base them on the pronouncements of experts. The problem is that neither we nor they…
pgleick | May 10, 2013The Colorado River, recently named America’s most endangered river, supports millions of people in the American Southwest and northwest Mexico and helps irrigate millions of acres of land. It is shared by seven states in the U.S. and Mexico, through a complex series of legal agreements and treaties.
Yet every drop of water on the river is accounted for, used, reused, and transpired away, and today, no water reaches the Colorado River delta in an average year. Quite simply, demands on the river exceed the river’s average supply, and this problem is projected to get worse as populations…
pgleick | February 14, 2013Invest in the future. And especially, invest in sustainable, effective job creation in the water sector. The result will be millions of new jobs – a significant result.
That is the key message from a new analysis just released today by the Pacific Institute on sustainable water jobs in the United States. That study, Sustainable Water Jobs: A National Assessment of Water-Related Green Job Opportunities, finds that proactive investments increasing efficient water use, improving water quality, expanding smart water treatment and re-use, and more will address growing problems associated with…
razib | August 19, 2009Americans know that the Ogallala Aquifer is important, and declining. This is much more of an issue in India, Satellites Unlock Secret To Northern India's Vanishing Water:
Using satellite data, UC Irvine and NASA hydrologists have found that groundwater beneath northern India has been receding by as much as 1 foot per year over the past decade - and they believe human consumption is almost entirely to blame.
Here's a map of the population density of India by district:
And now a map of the change in the levels of groundwater (red = decline, blue = increase):
The original letter to Nature,…