Colorado River Basin Faces Significant Groundwater Loss
In a striking revelation, a recent study highlights that the Colorado River Basin has lost an alarming volume of groundwater over the past two decades, totaling over 27 million acre-feet, an amount comparable to the entire volume of Lake Mead.
This depletion is particularly pronounced in the lower basin states, such as Arizona, which have experienced the greatest losses.
Utilizing data from NASA’s GRACE satellites, researchers assessed the basin’s freshwater reserves and discovered a troubling trend: since 2003, groundwater is being consumed more rapidly than it can be replenished, with the pace of losses increasing.
Alarmingly, the last decade has seen groundwater depletion occurring at three times the rate of the previous ten years, with groundwater constituting the majority of the loss.
According to Arizona State University professor Jay Famiglietti, a co-author of the study, the decline is driven by climate change and population growth. Famiglietti remarked, “It’s in part a lack of management. And if we want to survive and, you know, eat food, because, again, most of our water is used to produce food if we want to be doing that for decades and decades and centuries, now is the time to make those changes.”
Famiglietti also emphasized the need for more comprehensive on-the-ground data, such as well usage rates, to aid future research efforts.
The findings of this study have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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