"Water balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint"
Tom Gleeson, Yoshihide Wada, Marc F. P. Bierkens, and Ludovicus P. H. van Beek
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This diagram shows aquifer sizes and locations and groundwater footprints.
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Summary: This article was about how groundwater footprints are being used to track how fast groundwater is being used to how fast it is replenishing. Groundwater is an area of fresh water that helps keep ecosystems alive, supply drinking water to humans, and supplies water for farming, or any other type of agriculture. Recently there has been a major decrease in groundwater all over the world. A groundwater footprint is "the area required to sustain groundwater use and groundwater-dependent ecosystem services." Humans are affecting Earth's groundwater footprint because we are using groundwater so fast that we are taking all of the fresh water from many large aquifers all over the world, especially in Asia and North America. The article stated that the groundwater footprint for the whole world is about 3 and a half times larger than the total area of aquifers themselves. Because of that, many people live in ares that depend on groundwater but they are threatened because of the lack of groundwater left. Scientists are now trying to use the groundwater footprint to estimate whether or not groundwater will be able to renew its amount of groundwater in aquifers.
Opinion/Reflection: I think that this is a very important issue. If humans use up all of the groundwater from major aquifers, then there won't be any left for farming, or even for the ecosystem itself. Us, as humans, have to find a way to 1. either find a new source of fresh water, or 2. find a way to limit the amount of groundwater that we use. Also, I think that the groundwater footprint would be a very important in figuring out what it will take to help renew groundwater in aquifers in order to lower the percent of groundwater footprint size compared to the total are of aquifers themselves.
Questions:
1. What do you think humans should do in order to help preserve groundwater and aquifers?
2. What do you think would happen to the local ecosystem in all of the groundwater is drained from the local aquifer?
3. If the current rate of groundwater use occurs without being renewed, how do you think that would affect Earth as a whole?
I found this site on locating underground water
ReplyDeletehttp://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/gwhowtofind.html
the articil talks about how to find good quality under ground water. It tells how scientist know the quality and depth of the water. Also how much is under the ground. Also the talk how some water is in rocks or is stored inside the rocks. I thought it was a good site with good information on underground water.
I chose to Invite Tom Gleeson, one of the main authors of the article, to comment on our blog. He seems to have knowledgeable information about the process of ground water and hopefully he will comment :)
ReplyDeleteHere is what I said:
Good Afternoon! My name is Sydney and I am in 9th grade right outside of Philadelphia,PA and am currently in Environmental Science. What our class is doing as a side project is we will post "blogs" of summaries of articles of our choice. We happened to come across this one and used it in one of our blogs. What I am hoping is that you would be willing to take a few minutes and comment on our blog to add more of your opinion and expertise knowledge on your article, "Water Balance of Global Aquifers revealed by Groundwater Footprint." The link is below and I would appreciate it very much if you could please give us more knowledge on this subject.
Thank You!
- Sydney S.
http://fivepeoplethatdonthaveaname.blogspot.com/2012/10/ground-water-balance.html
1. I think that we can try to find other ways to get clean, drink able water without having to use the groundwater and aquifers! We can you seawater and boil out all the germs and salt and whatever other organisms in the water and use the clean water as drinking water!
ReplyDelete2.I think that we would have to start paying more for water usage (like toilets, showers, and tap water). We would also have to pay more for bottle water and there would not be as strong of a supply of water for everyone in the community. We would also have to fight to get clean and usable water.
3.All of the freshwater would run out causing there to be a major war in order to get water, which we currently take for granite. There would also be many wars on who can have what water from where. This would also be a limiting factor of all organisms on land, because every living thing needs water to survive.
I also agree with Kaeli about this issue. We need to control the amount of ground water intake becuase we need water to survive in general. Without water, we would not exist. This also reminds me of another topic in class, the human population. Our population has now hit 7 billion but it could still be rising. Instead of worrying about the loss of water on this subject, the scientists have to watch how big the population gets, in case we actually come to our Carrying Capacity, which we mave have or mave have not reached it.
ReplyDeleteQuestions:
1. How could you track the movement of groundwater if groundwater footprints didn't exist?
2. What would happen to the Earth if the groundwater is gone?
3. In what ways can groundwater be restored to the Earth?
Hi Sydney! Thanks for your email and invite to comment. you have done a great job summarizing our research - how did a 9th grader get to be so smart? Keep up the great work! tom
ReplyDelete