Earth System Science: Water, water, everywhere.
A digital atlas is being planned to map out the world’s water usage. There are already a handful of such projects, but this one plans to do it all (there’s a theme at this conference, of doing things bigger – I guess that comes of all that interdisciplinary research). It will – in an all-singing and dancing online format - show global maps of water in terms of how much is in the ground, how much rains down, runs off, gets drunk or sucked up for industry, how many dams and reservoirs there are, etc. etc. etc. (see a document about it here).
The issue is important, the presenter told meeting participants, because water use is skyrocketing. In the 1970s we ‘consumed’ 1,300 cubic kilometres a year. Now that’s up to 2,000. So that’s water, water, everywhere and some of it we drink.
Comments
That said, in 1970 the population was 3.7 bn and today it's 6.5, so that suggests per capita use is going down, which might be seen as encouraging.
Posted by: Oliver | November 10, 2006 11:24 AM
Our management of water is very important. There is no reason why we should allow huge volumes of water to flop down and flow unimpeded across farms down stream, destroying them, while adjacent areas shrivel up by drought. There are huge pumps that can easily prevent this.
Increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is undoubtedly increasing climate warmth. However I suspect that also an equally great affect on warmth is the baring of soil by increase in annual crop acreage, roads, buildings, grazing, and desertification currently, especially in the tropics. You may see an article that briefly discusses this in more detail in http://charles_w.tripod.com/climate.html .
I see no reason why many climate water problems can not be much ameliorated by intelligent management of water both before and after the water reaches the soil, including pumping it into water tables through clean gravel filled deep holes.
Sincerely, Charles Weber
Posted by: Charles Weber | January 10, 2009 08:33 PM