Global groundwater use

[loquat149]

An interesting article on global groundwater use came out last week in the journal Nature. The authors derived a new metric termed the "groundwater footprint", essentially the size (area) a region's aquifer needs to be in order to sustain current use. For "use", they considered both human (e.g. irrigation) and environmental (e.g., minimum flows necessary to maintain estuaries). Regions with groundwater footprints greater than the actual size of their aquifers were considered stressed. While their regional analysis suggests most aquifers are not stressed, on a global scale the groundwater footprint is about 3.5 times greater than the actual size of available water.

Note that if you zoom in on Florida on their Figure 1, they did not consider the Floridan Aquifer, only Florida's Surficial Aquifer (see: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/swapp/aquifer.asp#).

Interestingly, the authors suggested their "footprint" approach could be applied at local scales for water management (SWFWMD?) and even fisheries.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture11295.html

Gleeson, T., Wada, Y., Bierkens, M. F. P. & van Beek, L. P. H. 2012. Water balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint. Nature 488: 197–200.

Dave