from the we're-sinking-deeper-into-the-chilly-California-sand dept.
The Central Valley of California makes up only 1% of U.S. farmland, but produces 40% of the nation's produce despite only receiving 5 to 10 inches (12 to 25 centimeters) of rainfall a year. That kind of productivity is due to massive pumping of groundwater for irrigation. After decades of pumping, parts of California are literally sinking and water is getting harder to get at (wells in the Tulare Basin have to be drilled a kilometer deep).
Groundwater in this region comes from two sources that are separated by a dense layer of clay. The water on top of the clay resides in loose soil and this water gets replenished with rainfall and snowmelt runoff. The water below the clay is the aquifer and this is not replenished. A major problem is that nobody knows where the pumped water is being pulled from, nor how much of it remains.
A research team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory came up with a new method to monitor changes between the two water sources.
They attacked the problem by combining data on water loss from U.S.-European Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow-On satellites with data on ground-level changes from a[sic] ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-1 satellite. Ground-level changes in this region are often related to water loss because when ground is drained of water, it eventually slumps together and sinks into the spaces where water used to be – a process called subsidence.
[...] The researchers created a simple numerical model of these two layers of soils in the Tulare Basin. By removing the long-term subsidence trend from the ground-level-change data, they produced a dataset of only the month-to-month variations. Their model revealed that on this time scale, virtually all of the ground-level change can be explained by changes in aquifers, not in the water table.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Puffin on Tuesday April 19 2022, @10:25PM
Only thing worse than fossil fuels is fossil water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @11:28PM (2 children)
Ah yes! The world of finance! They need that money for mergers and acquisitions and buybacks. How much water would 43 billion dollars buy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:08AM (1 child)
Per the summary: "only receiving 5 to 10 inches (12 to 25 centimeters) of rainfall a year" There isn't enough surface water to support the amount of agriculture in the area.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:49AM
The majority of the earth's surface is covered with water, but there's no profit in making is usable by and for humans. It's more profitable to litigate and provoke war
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Acabatag on Wednesday April 20 2022, @12:23AM
There is no reason produce can't be grown more locally in many markets. Also this is about produce, not food crops in general.
Maybe it is time to not let large scale farming crush more local producers. In season there are plenty of local producers here in the Midwest.
Maybe it is time to go back to thinking of preserved food as not just being viewed as food variants. Things like pickles are a way to preserve cucumbers for off season. Home or local canning used to be common practice. The idea that fresh produce needs to be flown around everywhere might not be sustainable.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 20 2022, @12:45AM (10 children)
Stop pumping the aquifers dry. Build the desalination stations, and pump fresh water where it is needed. We need to pump a small river of water into the California and Arizona area. And, we need another small river further north, into Nevada and Utah. A third small river even further north, into Washington, and Idaho. All it takes is electricity, and we have solar, wind, and nooklar to choose from. Someone needs to make it happen.
Before someone points out how expensive it is to pump water up thousands of feet, I'll suggest we get Musk's Boring Company to work, punching holes through the mountain ranges. We don't need water on the west side of the mountains, we need it on the east side. And, if Los Angeles were to build it's own desalination plant to supply the Los Angeles area, that would take a lot of pressure off everyone and everything else. Ditto the Salton Sea/Imperial agriculture area. Build the desalination plant with their own money, and supply the entire Salton Sea. Stop sucking water from other resources that aren't renewable.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:21AM (3 children)
Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico don't need desalination and pumping. They only need the Colorado River Compact [wikipedia.org] adjusted to follow the actual amount of rainfall instead of basing it on the wettest year on record. That would mean an on-paper reduction of their allocation by 1/3, but an increase in actual water by about 50%. But that would mean California's share would be reduced by 1/3, and that's terrible.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:53AM (2 children)
That sounds good, in theory, at least. But, there is still a tremendous shortfall between water requirements, and water supply. And, there is every reason to believe that the shortfall is only going to grow in decades to come.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:39AM (1 child)
The entire shortfall is because California is over-consuming. The other states you mentioned are only facing a water shortage because they are forced to give up 1/3 of their fair share* to make up the difference. Increasing their supply would only encourage them to over-consume more, making the problem worse for everyone. What is needed is to reduce consumption, either by using more efficient farming methods, moving production to areas that have enough water to support it, or both. The other states you mentioned already do this, but California refuses.
*1/3 shortage after factoring for the actual water supply. Half by the official numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:37PM
This has been an issue for decades. I remember my Grandma in California telling us not to flush the toilets, to help conserve water. Wasn't due to her being a penny pincher either. The government's harping on people to conserve water, when the elephant in the room is the Agricultural misuse of water. In comparison the use by the people is small.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:38AM
"I'll suggest we get Musk's Boring Company to work"
good luck with that (getting it to work)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @05:52AM
I love that Runaway has an opinion. Of course, it is an uninformed Arkansas opinion about water in California, so rather like asking an Arkie about snow. Runaway is rather dumb. For example:
This is not true anywhere on the North American Continent. Is Runaway this stupid? Has anyone put him in charge of water distribution West of the Rocky Mountains? Not, I take it, and that is a good thing, because Runaway is a moron with opinions on everything, but knowledge of nothing. An ignorant moron, if you will.
So, STFU, Runaway. You are embarrassing yourself with your ignorance, again. Sucking up to Musk with no understanding of the realities serves you naught. Time to leave SN, Runaway, as janrinok says, nobody likes you, and you are no longer a member. (OK, that is what janrinok says, I don't understand it. )
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @09:15AM (2 children)
I already came up with the solution for the pacific mid/southwest region: We need nuke plants along the coast of California, run a pipeline parallel to Interstate 80 that does nothing but pump filtered (but not desalinated) water up to Utah. This can in turn be used to restore the Bonneville Salt Flats (being mined for potash which is causing issues for the land speed record events every year due to erosion from hard salt surfaces down to mud) and even saltwater all the way up to the Great Salt Lake, with desalinization being either natural as the water leeches through the ground into the aquafiers in regions already contaminated by excess salt, or via desalination plants that can be tapped off the main line along the way, providing regional freshwater at the expense of either waste brine or solids that need to be returned to the sea, or alternatively converted into another useful product.
Doing this would be a HUGE undertaking, prone to leaks in tectonicly active areas and subject to constant ongoing maintenance. But in doing so we could restore a number of habitat we were responsible for desertifying, provide a new continuous, if limited source of water to central parts of the country, and finally have a public works project for this generation on the scale of the Hoover Dam or Panama Canal, something transformative for countless people and showing the world how other regions could recover from their own environmental isues, whether global or local in cause.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @04:14PM
Now if you were saying converting that salt water into a mist/fog so the water evaporates (increasing the humidity) and the salt is left then yeah maybe it won't make things worse. But water vapor is a greenhouse gas, so it would be safer if you do it in a place where the higher humidity soon gets converted to fresh water rainfall. Whatever you do, at that scale it'll definitely affect the ecosystem. And if you do it in a smaller scale, it's unlikely to solve the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @08:30PM
You wouldn't need to pump any water to the Upper Basin if you let them keep their share of the rainwater.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:00AM
Well, there is this 1964 project to keep California desert alive for another 100 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Water_and_Power_Alliance [wikipedia.org]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:18AM (2 children)
Lick it and stick it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:46AM (1 child)
It's "National Aeronautics and Space Administration", officially abbreviated as NASA. "N/\S/\" is just a logo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @06:30AM
That's what THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!
This planet is ruled by dark forces and the hybrids aren't helping.