Parts of the Middle East are losing groundwater reserves at “an alarming rate,” according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data.
From the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2009, portions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria that lie within the Tigris and Euphrates river basins shed 117 million acre-feet of water. That’s roughly equivalent to the volume of the Dead Sea.
About one-fifth of that water disappeared during a drought that began in 2007, which decreased snowpack that feeds the rivers and dried out soils. Another 20 percent of the lost water came from surface lakes and reservoirs.
But the bulk of the water loss — about 60 percent — came from aggressive groundwater pumping, said the new study, which was published in the journal Water Resources Research.
That includes 1,000 new groundwater wells the Iraqi government dug between 2007 and 2009, to compensate for water lost when it increased flows from its major reservoir, Qadisiyah, to raise drought-lowered river levels along the Euphrates.
No comments:
Post a Comment