Those most blessed are least aware. Foresight is not one the jewels in the crown of Florida’s leaders.
Subtle signs are already present here for those who choose to look. Those who do not want to see do not look.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
-A river is like a life: once taken, it cannot be brought back-
River flows all across the globe are dropping
A vessel transports commercial barges along the Danube river near Pancevo, Serbia, on Oct. 9, 2012.
Another slow-motion, man-made environmental disaster has been discovered, and it’s underneath your feet.
About 70% of the water pumped out of underground aquifers worldwide is used for agriculture while much of the remainder quenches the thirst of cities. As industrial development spreads at a speedy clip, the rate at which those critical reservoirs are emptied is far outpacing the rate at which they are naturally replenished.
But as with the climate crisis, there are plenty of disastrous side-effects on the road to a water catastrophe. A new study released Wednesday says that diminishing groundwater is causing the level of streams and rivers to fall as well. Like the shrinking aquifers, surface water is critical to farms, towns and cities for everything from food to trade to energy production.
With water systems all over the planet already strained by global warming and overuse, this new discovery poses an additional threat.
Watersheds are regions where a set of streams and rivers fed by rain and snow-melt all flow into a common, larger body of water. They include the groundwater underneath. By 2050, more than half of watersheds where groundwater is pumped out may see river flow drop, according to the study, published in the journal Nature.
In watersheds such as California’s Central Valley, the Midwestern U.S.’s high plains, the Upper Ganges and the Indus in South Asia, groundwater is already being depleted. And while 2019 saw record flooding across the central U.S., the study uses data that go back as far as 1960, and projects groundwater-pumping impacts to 2100.
“These systems are all connected,” says Betsy Otto, director of the World Resource Institute’s global water program. “So when you pump groundwater, you actually may be pumping water from tributary streams that would otherwise go into surface water, bodies, rivers and so on. Or you may actually be pulling water out of the river….”
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Read the rest of the article here at this link at SF Gate.
