New research finds that the groundwater systems that hydrate your life are in rapid, sometimes accelerating decline around the globe. Here’s how to stop the retreat.
The water that pours out of your tap, or that’s unnecessarily packaged in a single-use bottle, or that helped grow the produce in your fridge—all of it may well have come from aquifers somewhere. These are layers of underground material that hold water, and can be made up of porous rock or sediments like sand and gravel. When it rains, some water collects in lakes and rivers and eventually flows out to sea, but some soaks deep into the ground, accumulating in these subterranean stores.
Even more dramatically, the relentless extraction of groundwater is causing land to sink, a phenomenon known as subsidence: Drain an aquifer and it’ll collapse, like an empty water bottle. According to one estimate, in the next two decades this subsidence could affect 1.6 billion people and cause trillions of dollars of damage. In California, for example, agriculture has made the land sink dozens of feet in some places.
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