4/9/2017 Agriculture is depleting world aquifers, new satellite measurements show | MinnPost

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Agriculture is depleting world aquifers, new

satellite measurements show
By Ron Meador | 04/07/17

Creative Commons/University of Delaware Carvel REC

Among crops leading to the most depletion globally in 2010, wheat makes up 22 percent of global groundwater depletion for irrigation.

Unsustainable pumping of groundwater for irrigated agriculture is acclerating rapidly around the world,
according to new research that matches crop production statistics against high-tech measurements of
aquifer drawdowns.

Agricultures heavy demand on the worlds freshwater resources is well understood from the output end
of all water consumption for all uses, the United Nations estimates, 70 percent goes to produce food.

But the problem has been more difficult at the sourcing end, which requires distinguishing between
perpetually replenished surface water from lakes and streams on the one hand, and essentially
nonrenewable underground reserves on the other.

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4/9/2017 Agriculture is depleting world aquifers, new satellite measurements show | MinnPost

Quantifying the impact of withdrawals from aquifers has become a little easier since the introduction
about 15 years ago of the satellite program known as GRACE, for Gravity Recovery and Climate
Experiment, developed in a collaboration of the U.S. and German space programs.

Using a pair of satellites equipped with sensors that

measure changes in the earths gravitational field, scientists
can now visualize whats going on with changing water
volumes far below the surface (also, for that matter, with
water locked in polar ice sheets).

For a paper published last week in the prestigious journal

Nature, an international team of researchers led by
scientists at the UKs Institute for Sustainable Resources
and NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies looked
at the gap between the rapid rate at which water is being
withdrawn from aquifers and the very slow pace at which it
is returned, essentially via rainfall and surface water
filtering down through soil. Because most of the returns
occur on time scales of many decades, at least, the gap amounts to a long-term depletion of groundwater
resource.

But where is the water going?

To answer that question, the team made what appears to be the first effort to overlay depletion data with
country-by-country statistics on agricultural output, to see how much of the loss could be attributed to
food production.

They called the resulting measurement GWD groundwater depletion for irrigation and the numbers
were rather grim in terms of the acceleration rate.

Depletion up 24 percent in just 10 years

In the year 2000, GWD was estimated at 19.47 cubic kilometers. By 2010, the endpoint of the analysis, it
had risen to 24.14 km3 an increase of 24 percent in just one decade. (If that volume measure seems
unimpressively small, note that onecubic kilometer is 26.42 billion gallons.)

Of course, agricultural depletion is not uniform across the globe. About two-thirds of the GWD calculated
for 2010 was in just four countries: India (7.35 km3), Iran (3.33 km3), Pakistan (2.75 km3) and China
(2.40 km3). Almost 85 percent occurred in 10 nations the top four plus the United States (1.62 km3),
Mexico (1.11 km3), Libya (.25 km3), Turkey (.20 km3), and Italy (.20 km3).

During the decade that ended in 2010, the acceleration of GWD was most rapid in India (23 percent),
China (102 percent) and the United States (31 percent).

Nor does all agriculture contribute equally, the researchers found:

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4/9/2017 Agriculture is depleting world aquifers, new satellite measurements show | MinnPost

Thecropsleadingtothemostdepletiongloballyin2010,bothbecauseoftheirlarge
productionandhighGWDintensity,arewheat(22%ofglobalGWD,or65km3/year)rice
(17%),sugarcrops(7%),cotton(7%)andmaize(5%).

As a result of this, GWD itself is further concentrated within parts of the producing countries where
output is highest:

MostGWDisconcentratedinafewregionsthatrelysignificantlyonoverexploited
aquiferstogrowcrops,mainlytheUSA,Mexico,theMiddleEastandNorthAfrica,India,
PakistanandChina,includingalmostallthemajorbreadbasketsandpopulation
centresoftheplanet[myemphasis].

Both distribution factors raise obvious issues of food security and so does a third, which the paper
addresses at some length:

Food and water security

Because many of the crops driving GWD trends are globally traded commodities, the threats to
agriculture posed by overconsumption of groundwater for irrigation are also threats to the economies of
exporting countries, and to essential food supplies in importing countries.

Indeed, many countries where GWD is accelerating are both exporters and importers the U.S., Mexico,
Iran, Saudi Arabia and China are in the top tier on both sides of the trade ledger and therefore face the
dual risk of losing production capacity and access to food produced elsewhere.

This embedding of groundwater in globalized commodities also results in a virtual water trade, in
which this most fundamental and local of resources is bought and sold across borders within what you
might consider the packaging of grain, fiber and sugar. And this adds yet another dimension of
insecurity:

Avastmajorityoftheworldspopulationlivesincountriessourcingnearlyalltheirstaple
cropimportsfrompartnerswhodepletegroundwatertoproducethesecrops,highlighting
risksforglobalfoodandwatersecurity.Somecountries,suchastheUSA,Mexico,Iran
andChina,areparticularlyexposedtotheserisksbecausetheybothproduceandimport
foodirrigatedfromrapidlydepletingaquifers.

The big and unanswered question in this area, of course, is how much water remains in the worlds
aquifers. GRACE can measure changes in volumes but not the volumes themselves.

Even where the situation has been studied closely, as with the Ogallala aquifer underlying the central
U.S., and those beneath Californias Central Valley, the complexity and sheer scale of the geology and
hydrology involved defy efforts to measure and forecast the available resource with confidence.

So we simply dont know whether the glass is half full or half empty. We just know that its emptying out
rapidly, that the rate is accelerating, and that replenishment will take may generations.
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4/9/2017 Agriculture is depleting world aquifers, new satellite measurements show | MinnPost

And now we are coming to know more about how heavily the depletion is being driven by agriculture,
driven in turn by population growth and rising living standards around the world.

The paper suggests that its findings could be used to

helptargeteffortstoimprovethesustainabilityofwateruseandfoodproduction.
SolutionstominimizeGWDcouldinclude,intheproducingcountries,watersaving
strategiessuchasimprovingirrigationefficiencyandgrowingmoredroughtresistant
crops,togetherwithtargetedmeasures,suchasmeteringandregulationofgroundwater
pumping.Thesepolicyeffortsneedtobefurthersupportedbylocalanalysisthattakesinto
accountsocioeconomic,culturalandenvironmentalaspects.

All worthy aspirations, and I imagine the worlds governments will be taking them up as soon as theyve
finished fixing that little problem of global warming.

***

The full paper, Groundwater depletion embedded in international food trade, can be found here but
access is not free.

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