Hawaii's Fresh Water Leaks to the Ocean Through Underground Rivers (archive)
There are few things on the island of Hawaii that are more valuable than fresh water. This is not because the island is dry. There is plenty of rain. The trouble is that there is tremendous demand for this water and much of it that does accumulate on the island's surface disappears before it can be used.
New research by marine geophysicists reveals that underground rivers running off the large island's western coast are a key force behind this vanishing act.
[...] Ocean water conducts electricity exceptionally well because of the presence of dissolved salt ions. By comparison, fresh water is a rather poor conductor. Aware of these different electrical properties, [Eric Attias, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii,] worked with a team at Scripps Institute of Oceanography to tow a 3,200-foot long system behind a boat that emitted electromagnetic fields down through the submerged coastal rocks near Hualalai volcano on the west coast.
Dr. Attias' work shows that within the rock of the island below the waves, there are underground rivers of fresh water flowing 2-½ miles out into the ocean. These rivers are flowing through fractured volcanic rock and surrounded by porous rocks that are saturated with salt water. Between all of this salt water and the flowing fresh water are thin layers of rock formed from compacted ash and soil that appear to be impermeable and thus keeping the two types of water separated. In total, these rivers appear to contain enough fresh water to fill about 1.4 million Olympic swimming pools.
Marine electrical imaging reveals novel freshwater transport mechanism in Hawai'i (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd4866) (DX)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @05:52AM (1 child)
Gloomy prediction:
Now that this differential has been discovered by humans, we will exploit it and thereby ruin it (probably to fill swimming pools or water crops), and destroy everything else that lives due to the differential.
How much of the world's ocean web keys to these fresh sluices? We'll find out in a few decades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @05:31AM
Or make yummy coca cola!
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @06:13AM (1 child)
So if the water, did not flow down in rivers, of what ever sort, to join its mother, the ocean, the brine would increase, and the water would no longer escape to the clouds, and fall as the gentle rain upon the land, and fill the rivulets, the traces, the streams and brooks, the rivers and the mighty tides of the Eurphrates, the 黃河 and the 长江, the Nile and the Amazon, the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, and the Columbia. Do you think, like stupid Americans, that water is a fixed resource, rather than a planetary cycle. Stupid Americans. The Problem is not the water, the problem is how you treat it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @02:05PM
It's a bigger problem when you don't treat the water.
https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/happenowdeadzone/ [noaa.gov]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday November 30 2020, @12:03AM
Find those underground rivers of fresh ( well, not saline ) water using geologic subsurface mapping much as we do for finding oil.
Those people could sure use the water, and it would be far better to use that than by desalination.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday November 30 2020, @02:02PM
Per what? Second? Minute? Attochronon?
If it's a river, it must be flowing in some sense.