Where the world’s running out of water, in one map

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/10/where-the-worlds-running-out-of-water-in-one-map/

Many of the world’s most important food-producing regions depend on freshwater from massive underground aquifers that have built up over thousands of years. The Ogallala Aquifer in the midwestern United States. The Upper Ganges, sustaining India and Pakistan.

Yet many of those aquifers are now being sucked dry by irrigation and other uses faster than they can be replenished by rainwater, according to a new study in Nature. It’s unclear when many of these aquifers will be completely emptied — scientists are still trying to measure how much “fossil water” these aquifers actually hold. But it’s a worrisome trend: About 1.7 billion people rely on aquifers that are rapidly being depleted. And once they’re gone, it would take thousands of years to refill them.

The Nature study, published by researchers at McGill and Utrecht University in the Netherlands, offers a map showing the regions where the use of water from these aquifers vastly exceeds the rate at which they’re being refilled by rain.

[Demeter]

1. Thanks, X

This is the kind of stuff we need in daily newspapers, and don't get, because the daily papers are no more...

[xchrom]

2. ...

[GliderGuider]

3. Here's another fun one on global water stress to 2025 by the National Intelligence Council

http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Special%20Report_Global%20Water%20Security%20Map.pdf

The map in the PDF shows that by 2025 the intelligence community expects to see a massive increase in water stress in a band stretching from North Africa all the way across the Middle East, through India, China and SouthEast Asia, as well as Eastern Europe, much of Southern Africa, the western (currently drought-ridden) states in the USA and Austgralia.

Essentially they are saying that the entire grain-growing area of the world except for South America and Canada is going to be under drought conditions within 15 years.

The whole series of climate/water/security assessment papers is available here:

http://www.dni.gov/index.php/about/organization/national-intelligence-council-nic-publications