For want of a drink

...is the title of a phantastic special issue on water in the Economist this week. An absolutely worthwhile read, front to back, for anyone interested in a primer on the global context of water, drinking water, sanitation, food production, water scarcity, water pollution, water management, and water politics and its importance to the planet's livelihood and survival. The report touches on all the important areas and does it well, REALLY well! The author, John Grimond, is to be congratulated to this series. This is the best thing "water" in the general media that I have ever seen, when it comes to providing an overview of water issues around the globe. It is an extremely timely article. It comes just ahead of our conference on "Sustainable Groundwater in Agriculture: An International Conference Linking Science with Policy", 15-17 June 2010, in San Francisco. Conference speakers include a number of the experts that John consulted with in preparation for his articles.

From my perspective - and related to several of the notes below - kudos to John Grimond also for making a successful effort to convey the hydrologic concept of "consumptive water use" (water that goes to evapotranspiration) in contrast to non-consumptive water uses (e.g., water down the kitchen sink), for pointing out the importance of agricultural water use and its link to feeding the world, for getting it right on the importance of crop ET, and for the clever integration of groundwater concepts into this whirlwind tour of global water.

Here is a list of links to the individual articles:

Loosing Groundwater at the Grand Scale

This week, an intriguing study, in which scientists used satellites to determine groundwater depletion at the continental scale, put the spotlight on groundwater withdrawals in India. [Original article in Nature (for those with access via their library), a review in the Washington Post and in the ScienceBlog]. Very timely article for Americans worried about dwindling groundwater resources in the High Plains Aquifer, in the arid Southwest, or in California. The article, by Matthew Rodell and others, reported that, over a six-year period, the average annual loss of groundwater across three states in northwestern India (not just a single small basin) was about 4 cm (1.6 inches) equivalent height of water or nearly 18 cubic kilometers per year across the 450,000 sq.km (170,000 sq.miles) region. At 12% specific yield (the proportion of the ground actually occupied by groundwater), this means an average annual decline of 0.33 m (1 foot) across that entire region. During the period of observation (2002-2008), the precipiation in Northwest India was reported to be about average.

Regulating California's Groundwater?

Felicity Barringer from the New York Times wrote an interesting story in yesterday's NYT entitled "Rising Calls to Regulate California Groundwater". It nicely highlights the widely varying opinions on just how much or little the state ought to look into the farmer's backyard to check on her/his groundwater usage.

I had the opportunity to chat with Felicity last week as he prepared the story. Of course there is so much research that goes into putting these together and only so much that goes into print (that's why we all have blogs...). Here, in brief, are some of my thoughts on the topic, many of which I shared with Felicity: