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It hardly matters until we pump all the aquifers dry. At that point a majority of US crops will be reliant upon rain water, which won't be enough to sustain the
by probablycorey 16y ago
It hardly matters until we pump all the aquifers dry. At that point a majority of US crops will be reliant upon rain water, which won't be enough to sustain the farms in the west. Much of Oklahoma, Kansas, California will revert back into the Great American Desert (as it was known before).
For a great book on the subject, check out http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244 http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- hugh3 16y agoMost of California's agriculture is the Central Valley. Surely that was never desert? It's got rain all winter and runoff from the mountains all summer.
- edj 16y agoFrom Wikipedia[1]: "The northern Central Valley has a hot Mediterranean climate (Koppen climate classification Csa); the more southerly parts in rainshadow zones are dry enough to be Mediterranean steppe (BShs, as around Fresno) or even low-latitude desert (BWh, as in areas southeast of Bakersfield)." Central Valley farms and the coastal cities are mostly fed by water from the Sierra's, via either rivers or one of California's many aquifers (e.g. Hetch Hetchy, Los Angeles, Colorado, California). [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_(California)#Climate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_(California)#Cli...
- smallblacksun 16y agoThe vast majority of water for California farms comes from Sierra Nevada snow-melt runoff, not aquafers.