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> Our data suggest a continuous submarine aquifer system spans at least 350 km of the U.S. Atlantic coast and contains about 2800 km3 of low-salinity groundwate
by hindsightbias 7y ago
> Our data suggest a continuous submarine aquifer system spans at least 350 km of the U.S. Atlantic coast and contains about 2800 km3 of low-salinity groundwater.
That’s a lot of water.
- Waterluvian 7y agoThat is certainly a lot of water. To put it in perspective that's something like 10% of what's in the Great Lakes
- rayiner 7y agoNot really. The Ogallala aquifer is bigger than that (3,600 km^3), and we've already drawn it down 312 km^3 since 1950.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoWe've only used up a tenth of the Ogallala aquifer in 70 years? That's far better than I thought. (Still not good...)
- lostapathy 7y agoIt's worse, effectively, than the raw numbers, though. It's not like the aquifer is a swimming pool that you can pump out entirely from a single low point. It's water in a porous rock formation. The more we deplete it, the deeper we have to drill wells and the less water comes out of any given well before it goes dry. And it's not like we can recover anywhere near 100% of the water for any amount of effort.
- tomjakubowski 7y agoThis report cites the same 3.6E3 km^3 figure (2.91 billion acre-feet) as the amount of "recoverable water" in the aquifer. Do you know if that accounts for the effects you described? https://ne.water.usgs.gov/projects/HPA/index.html https://ne.water.usgs.gov/projects/HPA/index.html edit: from the report Recoverable water in storage is the fraction of water in the aquifer that will drain by gravity and can be withdrawn by wells. The remaining water in the aquifer is held to the aquifer material and generally cannot be withdrawn by wells (Meinzer, 1923).