Through The Sandglass

Earth Science Week: "Geology helps the land tell you stories"

It's this year's Earth Science Week - see the American Geosciences Institute and Geological Society of London sites). I have periodically attempted to join the celebrations with posts on the "Nine big ideas" and the associated videos, Earth Science Literacy, and the outstanding "known unknowns" of earth science - please have a re-visit.

These were largely ruminations on what geology is about, the "philosophy" of the science, and a little advocacy for greater awareness. The question of why geology, what makes it fascinating, were subtexts, so my attention this year has been caught by a piece from September 2015 by Julia Turner, editor in chief of Slate. Titled "Your World, Rocked: A good introduction to geology course is actually a course in time," it is an eloquent (and personal) testimony to the value (sometimes not so obvious) of even a modest exposure to how our home planet works. It is, of course from the perspective of US education, but that matters not at all - its message is universal. The "rocks for jocks" amusement in the introduction is purely American - and so true. I taught Geology 101, otherwise known as "rocks for jocks" for several years, with many rewards and frustrations. Chief amongst the latter were the many kids who told me how much they enjoyed it, having had no idea at all about geology, and regretted that they were too far down their academic path (having left the science requirement until last) to pursue it further. I doubt that problem has gone away - to the loss of the science. There were many kids who were a joy to teach and interact with (although here I do not include the young woman who entered my office, closed the door, and declared that "Professor Welland, I'd do anything for an A"). But I digress....

In celebration of Earth Science Week, and in the hope that it might persuade just one young person to take a geology class, I am taking the liberty of reproducing in its entirety Julia Turner's piece from Slate:

A good introduction to geology course is actually a course in time.

By Julia Turner

Let me start by defending geology’s honor. Is there any other discipline that a rhyme so easily reduces to ridicule? Nearly every campus has some version of “rocks for jocks,” the intro geology course touted as the easiest way for granite-brained humanities majors to fulfill their science requirements without significant intrusion on their time or erosion of their GPAs.

But you shouldn’t take geology because it’s easy. (It isn’t necessarily easy—the geology class I took, from a bright-eyed elfin woman with the pleasing, rocklike name of Jan Tullis, certainly wasn’t.) You should take geology because it will fundamentally transform the way you see the world.

I mean this literally. Understanding geology gives you a new way to interpret the visual data of the planet. Sometimes this can feel like X-ray vision or a sixth sense. The color of the soil can tell you what it’s made of. The lightning bolts of white across that cliff the highway blasted through? Quartz veins, a sign of metamorphic activity, way back, when fissures opened up in bending, cracking stone, and mineral-laden water coursed through. Looking out of a plane window at the contours of a mountain range, you can tell from shape alone whether the peaks are old or new—or rather, which are very very old and which are just old. (It’s the opposite of human aging: cragginess is a sign of relative youth, and smoothness comes only with time.) And the words! Schist. Nickeliferous. Gneiss. Each one with its own dense poetry.

Geology helps the land tell you stories. I remember flying once and noticing funny little slab-like mountains, each one distinct from the next, lying in parallel rows. Where once I would have seen only mystery, now I could imagine how those mountains came to be—a sedimentary bed, layer upon flat layer of different types of rock, broken and thrust upward by the movement of the plates, revealing a cross section in which the softer rocks had eventually eroded away, leaving only these orderly little slabs.

Geology is a gorgeous way to contemplate the abyss.

But geology does more than give you something to think about when you examine pebbles on a beach or go swimming in a quarry. You should also take geology because there is no better way to gain perspective on the fleetingness of life. Any good intro geology course is actually a course in time. You’ve heard the statistic: If the whole planet has been around for a single 24-hour day, the dinosaurs showed up at 10:56 p.m. and we just before 11:59. But imagine spending hours holding that thought in your mind, learning what happened during all the time that preceded us. Understanding, in a real way, how long the planet has been around; how slow, patient, and indifferent the movement of the rocks beneath us has been; how insignificant in the scheme of things our fervid civilizations and wars and inventions really are—this is a head trip better than any you’ll experience during the concert at Spring Fling..

Taking geology actually had a funny side effect for me. I came into the class an avid environmentalist. I was a child of the ’90s. I cared about whales. I recycled. I spent a semester on a farm. I wanted to keep humans from changing and destroying the planet. But geology complicated my understanding of this desire. The planet has been changing for millennia. It’s been destroyed and remade again and again. The temperature used to be different. The continents were in different places. Different creatures roamed the land. The environmentalist instinct to preserve the planet exactly as it is began to seem not altruistic, but selfish. The planet is a tough cookie. This pile of rocks doesn’t need saving. What we were trying to save, it seemed, was the version of the planet that works best for ourselves. And, sure, future generations and all the other species that currently live here. Still a worthy goal, of course. Perhaps an even worthier one, when you consider how unusual and unlikely Earth’s menagerie is. But geology made me think about it in a new way.

College students often enter university with an outsized view of their own significance. It’s good to study things that make you realize how unimportant you are. As a history major, I took a lot of classes that helped me understand how small my life is in the span of human existence. But there are a few courses—geology, astronomy, perhaps particle physics—that force students to confront true vastness, that make you consider the insignificance not just of your life, but of your entire species. Geology is a gorgeous way to contemplate the abyss.

This is valuable, in the end, because it both helps you care less and makes you care more. What’s a bad day in the scheme of things? But then again, why not make each one count? Something to consider, next time you contemplate the contours of the land.

Indeed.

 

re the stunning image at the head of this post: 

Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image by Reto Stöckli (land surface, shallow water, clouds). Enhancements by Robert Simmon (ocean color, compositing, 3D globes, animation). Data and technical support: MODIS Land Group; MODIS Science Data Support Team; MODIS Atmosphere Group; MODIS Ocean Group Additional data: USGS EROS Data Center (topography); USGS Terrestrial Remote Sensing Flagstaff Field Center (Antarctica); Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (city lights)

This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public.

Much of the information contained in this image came from a single remote-sensing device-NASA’sModerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS. Flying over 700 km above the Earth onboard the Terra satellite, MODIS provides an integrated tool for observing a variety of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric features of the Earth. The land and coastal ocean portions of these images are based on surface observations collected from June through September 2001 and combined, or composited, every eight days to compensate for clouds that might block the sensor’s view of the surface on any single day. Two different types of ocean data were used in these images: shallow water true color data, and global ocean color (or chlorophyll) data. Topographic shading is based on the GTOPO 30 elevation dataset compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey’s EROS Data Center. MODIS observations of polar sea ice were combined with observations of Antarctica made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s AVHRR sensor—the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. The cloud image is a composite of two days of imagery collected in visible light wavelengths and a third day of thermal infra-red imagery over the poles.

 

Sandscapes of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

I have just returned from an utterly memorable two weeks in the stunning, extraordinary, landscapes of Iceland. I have never seen anything quite like it. Iceland is, quite simply, unique - and wonderful. There will undoubtedly be further bulletins, but for a start, a modest gallery.

(this, by the way, is the end of the lava flows from the 2014/2015 eruption of Bárðarbunga and Holuhraun in the central highlands)

and, after two weeks of daily practice and testing with a variety of patient Icelanders, I can now pronounce Eyjafjallajökull more or less correctly - if slowly.

"No one actually studies sand" - misconceptions and science literacy

 

For one reason or another (likely to be discussed in a future post), I have been working on an essay that attempts to address cross-cultural aspects of viewing and valuing the land and reviews the potential implications for learning geoscience through integrating "geomythology" (a less than perfect term) into the process.

Coincidentally, in the course of seemingly endless research and reading, I came a across a fascinating geoscience education story on sand. In 2014, the American National Association of Geoscience Teachers published two fascinating issues on the theme of "Teaching Geoscience in the Context of Culture and Place," full of provocative discussion and ideas. In the second issue, one particular paper caught my attention: "Where Are You From? Writing Toward Science Literacy by Connecting Culture, Person, and Place," written by Kanesa Duncan Seraphin from the Curriculum Research & Development Group and the Center for Marine Science Education, University of Hawai'i. As she writes in her abstract:

The ways in which people view the world, and by extension the ways in which they learn, are shaped by cultural context. As educators striving to build scientific literacy among our students, it is critical to bridge the gaps among disparate cultures, traditional ways of knowing, and Western science. Understanding the value of traditional knowledge and welcoming the discourse and novel viewpoints associated with cultural and place-based practices is the first step in opening the door of scientific literacy not only for indigenous students but also for students struggling to find personal relevance in science.

She discusses the disconnects in today's world between science and culture that can "distract students from effectively learning" and goes on to discuss "Activities that connect sense of place and person provide opportunities for students to learn about and integrate the human element of science with scientific research and discovery." Her focus is on personal writing that 

helps students take ownership of their learning and facilitates students’ learning awareness. Writing provides a space for students to connect with their culture and their thoughts—to think about what they know and believe, thereby promoting metacognition and purposeful knowledge generation. Writing also promotes scientific literacy by improving synthesis skills through the construction of a written record.

Among the examples she discusses is a wonderful example of the results of place-based learning by high school teachers taken first to the beach and then to the lab to pursue experimental enquiry through personal connections. The original exercises are described here, in what is, in itself, an excellent and valuable report well-worth reading). However, it's what Seraphin includes as feedback from the students that I found particularly intriguing. In their writings, the students were encouraged to record what they "used to believe" about sand and subsequently recognised as misconceptions following the learning process. Here they are:

See why I found this so fascinating? As Seraphin comments:

This type of feedback is an important information-gathering step for teachers and an important learning step for students. It also reflects the ability of writing to engage students in the learning process by providing the space and freedom for learners to express what they think (or used to think) without fear of failure.

and in her conclusions

The working hypothesis is that enhancing place and personal connections in science teaching will improve students’ self-efficacy and attachment to science learning, thereby leading to increased retention in science courses, higher test scores, better grades, and higher-quality student work. Writing often and with cultural, and place-based, relevance is therefore recommended as a thinking tool to personally and contextually connect the past, present, and future aspects of teaching and learning.

"Hear, hear" is all I can say.

 

A Reverence for Rivers (3): Piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights

 

We only have ONE hydrologic system, dammit!

School kids know that (it's in all their textbooks), geologists, geophysicists, geomorphologists, environmental scientists and ecologists, climatologists and meteorologists, resource scientists, most engineers, and a hell of a lot of people on the street know that. It is, however, a fact that seems to have escaped multitudes of politicians, policy-makers, regulators, at least one US presidential candidate, and, of course, commercial enterprises - whether out of profound and inexcusable ignorance or under the influence of vested interests and lobbies is open to question.

But it remains a fact. The entire hydrologic system - rain drops, clouds, springs, creeks, rivers, lakes, snow, ice, run-off, evapotranspiration and groundwater - is interconnected. Mess about with one bit and other parts will be affected - it's complex, but it is one single system.

The title of this post is a quotation from John Wesley Powell, a voice of knowledge and rationality that we could benefit from today - more of that, quite possibly, in a future post. Over 120 years ago, addressing an audience of (booing) vested interests in irrigation at any cost, he said:

When all the rivers are used, when all the creeks in the ravines, when all the brooks, when all the springs are used, when all the reservoirs along the streams are used, when all the canyon waters are taken up, when all the artesian waters are taken up, when all the wells are sunk or dug that can be dug, there is still not sufficient water to irrigate all this arid region.  I tell you, gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply these arid lands.

This occasional series, A Reverence for Rivers, is dedicated to Luna Leopold and perhaps I should add John Wesley Powell. In a the previous episode I quoted from a piece, written over sixty years ago by Leopold and his colleague Harold Thomas:

There are enough examples of streamflow depletion by ground-water development, and of ground-water pollution from wastes released into surface waters, to attest to the close though variable relation between surface water and ground water.

Man has coped with the complexity of water by trying to compartmentalize it. The partition committed by hydrologists—into ground water, soil water, surface water, for instance—is as nothing compared with that which has been promulgated by the legal profession, which has on occasion borrowed from the criminal code to term some waters "fugitive" and others, a "common enemy." The legal classification of water includes "percolating waters," "defined underground streams," "underflow of surface streams," "water-courses." and "diffuse surface waters"; all these waters are actually interrelated and interdependent, yet in many jurisdictions unrelated water rights rest upon this classification.

This jurisdictional and regulatory problem of compartmentalization of water resources contrary to the facts of the way the system works has given rise to many of the profound problems we face today. So I thought it might be helpful to set out some of the facts of the relationships between ground and surface waters and the consequences of ignoring them - bear with me, this may be a summary but it's not going to be short!  

First, the interested reader can do no better than to go (as is so often the case) to the USGS. Published nearly 20 years go, Circular 1139 is titled Ground Water And Surface Water: A Single Resource. The synopsis is as follows:

As the Nation's concerns over water resources and the environment increase, the importance of considering ground water and surface water as a single resource has become increasingly evident. Issues related to water supply, water quality, and degradation of aquatic environments are reported on frequently. The interaction of ground water and surface water has been shown to be a significant concern in many of these issues. For example, contaminated aquifers that discharge to streams can result in long-term contamination of surface water; conversely, streams can be a major source of contamination to aquifers. Surface water commonly is hydraulically connected to ground water, but the interactions are difficult to observe and measure and commonly have been ignored in water-management considerations and policies. Many natural processes and human activities affect the interactions of ground water and surface water. The purpose of this report is to present our current understanding of these processes and activities as well as limitations in our knowledge and ability to characterize them.

USGS Circular1376, published in 2012, incorporated material from 1139 and proceed to document in considerable detail Streamflow Depletion by Wells—Understanding and Managing the Effects of Groundwater Pumping on Streamflow. Again, a straightforward summary:

Groundwater is an important source of water for many human needs, including public supply, agriculture, and industry. With the development of any natural resource, however, adverse consequences may be associated with its use. One of the primary concerns related to the development of groundwater resources is the effect of groundwater pumping on streamflow. Groundwater and surface-water systems are connected, and groundwater discharge is often a substantial component of the total flow of a stream. Groundwater pumping reduces the amount of groundwater that flows to streams and, in some cases, can draw streamflow into the underlying groundwater system. Streamflow reductions (or depletions) caused by pumping have become an important water-resource management issue because of the negative impacts that reduced flows can have on aquatic ecosystems, the availability of surface water, and the quality and aesthetic value of streams and rivers.

Both of these publications should be required reading for anyone, anywhere who is even remotely involved in water management and policy-making.

So let's start with a simple and fairly self-explanatory image from the USGS:

Ground-water flow paths vary greatly in length, depth, and travel time from points of recharge
to points of discharge in the groundwater system.

Groundwater, streams and wells all interact and influence water flow, but the rates of that flow vary over several orders of magnitude, from days to millennia. The architecture and physical characteristics (permeability and so on) of the aquifer system are always complex in reality and the distribution of lower permeability (confining) layers will dramatically influence the direction, amount, and rate of flow. 

In places where the water table "outcrops" - i.e., intersects with the surface - there will be a spring (as at Havasu Falls, the image at the head of this post, ultimately feeding the Colorado River), a lake or groundwater feeding the flow of a river through its bed and banks. The relationship between the water table and a body of surface water is critical - a stream can be "gaining" flow from groundwater discharge or "losing" it by flow into the water table (depletion):

Groundwater discharge into streams and rivers is commonly the major contribution to their flow which is only augmented by rainfall and surface runoff.

Different segments of a river or stream may be typically gaining or losing and this will vary with the season - if the water table falls, the river may become "disconnected" from the water table, or, in times of flood, the river level may rise higher than the water table and effectively charge storage in its banks until the level falls back to normal.

All these variations occur quite naturally depending on time and place, and the system may be stable for long periods of time. But start pumping groundwater in the vicinity of a river and the system is de-stabilized. As the caption to this next USGS illustration describes, "In a schematic hydrologic setting where ground water discharges to a stream under natural conditions (A), placement of a well pumping at a rate (Q1) near the stream will intercept part of the ground water that would have discharged to the stream (B). If the well is pumped at an even greater rate (Q2), it can intercept additional water that would have discharged to the stream in the vicinity of the well and can draw water from the stream to the well (C)."

 To quote again from the USGS:

The first clear articulation of the effects of groundwater pumping on surface water was by the well-known USGS hydrologist C.V. Theis. In a paper published in 1940 entitled "The Source of Water Derived from Wells," Theis pointed out that pumped groundwater initially comes from reductions in aquifer storage. As pumping continues, the effects of groundwater withdrawals can spread to distant connected streams, lakes, and wetlands through decreased rates of discharge from the aquifer to these surface-water systems. In some settings, increased rates of aquifer recharge also occur in response to pumping, including recharge from the connected surface-water features. Associated with this decrease in groundwater discharge to surface waters is an increased rate of aquifer recharge. Pumping-induced increased inflow to and decreased outflow from an aquifer is now called "streamflow depletion" or "capture."

So there is a critical interaction between groundwater and surface water by complex flows that take place over days, centuries and millennia, and wells can cause major changes to that interaction - streamflow can be severely depleted, water tables lowered and aquifer water volume maintenance totally disrupted. 

For here is the first of what USGS Circular 1376 intriguingly documents as "common misconceptions." That is: 

Misconception 1. Total development of groundwater resources from an aquifer system is “safe” or “sustainable” at rates up to the average rate of recharge.

This is fundamental, because we hear all the time that aquifers are being "mined" as a result of volumes pumped exceeding the recharge rate from rainfall up in the hills - it's really not as simple as this. Because streams and rivers are frequently depleted by losing water to an aquifer, particularly when wells are pumping from that groundwater supply, it is this source that is the dominant way in which an aquifer is recharged, not by water from the hills. 

The sources of water to a well are reductions in aquifer storage, increases in the rates of recharge (inflow) to an aquifer, and decreases in the rates of discharge (outflow) from an aquifer. The latter two components are referred to as capture. In many groundwater systems, the primary components of capture are groundwater that would otherwise have discharged to a connected stream or river in the absence of pumping (referred to as captured groundwater discharge) and streamflow drawn into an aquifer because of the pumping (induced infiltration of streamflow)...

Reductions in aquifer storage are the primary source of water to a well during the early stages of pumping. The contribution of water from storage decreases and the contribution from streamflow depletion increases with time as the hydraulic stress caused by pumping expands outward away from the well and reaches one or more areas of the aquifer from which water can be captured. At some point in time, streamflow depletion will be the dominant source of water to the well (that is, more than 50 percent of the discharge from the well) and after an extended period of time may become the only source of water to the well. The time at which streamflow depletion is the only source of water to a well is referred to as the time to full capture.

So, if you choose to define and manage, through regulation and policy, groundwater and surface water as two entirely separate systems, you choose a recipe for disaster - you are more often than not severely double-counting and thereby overestimating your resources and you are not managing the system at all. And yet this is exactly what California, Arizona and, indeed, all the arid States of the Western US (not to mention other States and other countries) have been doing for more than a century. This has been superbly documented in ProPublica's piece, "Less Than Zero: Despite decades of accepted science, California and Arizona are still miscounting their water supplies." That analysis, part of their extensive "Killing the Colorado" series of reports, has also been summarised in the New York Times:

John Bredehoeft, a leading hydrogeologist and former director of the federal government’s Western states water program, bluntly emphasized the importance of basic honesty in counting water.

“If you don’t connect the two, then you don’t understand the system,” he said. “And if you don’t understand the system, I don’t know how in the hell you’re going to make any kind of judgement about how much water you've got to work with.”

Until state officials do, it seems unlikely that there will be any real solution to managing the Southwest’s strained water resources for the future.

But there's another, fundamental, problem - if you can't measure, monitor, document, you can't manage - and the data are essentially not there to measure, monitor and document. For example, California, again from the New York Times:

Although the state has not updated the surveys in the last three decades, the Department of Water Resources recently reported that across most of the state groundwater levels have dropped 50 feet below historical lows, with levels in many areas in the San Joaquin Valley more than 100 feet below previous historic lows.

In California, the state’s water agency has said that the failure to account for how groundwater withdrawals affect the state’s rivers is a major impediment to a true accounting of its resources. In April [2015], authorities reported that less than half of the state’s local water agencies had complied with a 2002 law that made them eligible for state funds only if they set up groundwater management plans and determined if a connection between surface water and groundwater existed. That connection does not exist uniformly and varies depending on local geology. Only 17 percent of the state’s groundwater basins had been examined.

Indeed, California still doesn't require that water pumped from underground be measured at all, much less factored into an overall assessment of total water resources; it’s merely an option under a new law signed last September.

California’s new groundwater legislation does require local water authorities to come up with sustainable groundwater plans, but they don’t have to do that until 2020, and they don’t have to balance their water withdrawals until 2040.

To all intents and purposes, the only way we have to analyse these issues is through computer modelling - very clever and sophisticated, but, at the end of the day it is modelling, not analysis of real-world data. But assembling meaningful real-world data is not easy on a local scale and the time-frame of aquifer behaviour is a long one. Make your way through USGS Circular 1376, and you will find several regional-scale analyses of groundwater/streamflow interaction based on the statistical analysis of data, and the authors document in detail the challenges of field studies, stating that

Statistical studies such as these can be used in general to evaluate the large-scale effects of basinwide pumping on streamflow reductions. They cannot, however, account for the specific effects of pumping at individual wells, nor can they help with understanding how specific management actions might affect future depletion. Such analyses require the use of analytical or numerical models.

So we are largely stuck with modelling. It is, nevertheless, a powerful tool, and several examples are presented in the USGS document. Since we are particularly interested in water and arid lands, here is a very relevant - not to mention fascinating, sobering, and perhaps surprising - example. The situation, that of a hypothetical desert-basin aquifer with a through-flowing river along the east side of the basin, is summarised here (remember that 1 acre-foot of water equals 1233 cubic meters):

There is natural recharge from the west and, under natural conditions, inflow from the river to the aquifer in the north and outflow from the aquifer to the river further downstream. Two wells are drilled into the aquifer, one five miles from the river, the other ten. Each well then pumps at a rate of around 750,000 cubic meters per year, and continues to do so for 50 years when pumping then ceases. The analysis treats each well separately - they are not both pumping at the same time. So let's consider the effects of streamflow of the well closer to the river (but still five miles away). What we are looking at are plots of the resulting increase in flow from the river into the aquifer, decrease in flow into the river from the aquifer and the total changes to river flow (depletion):

Over the period of pumping, the river's flow is decreased by almost 25%, depriving downstream users of water. After pumping stops, the river's flow begins to recover - but note the timescale: the river has still not returned to its natural flow rate after 150 years. And nearly half of the total volume of depletion will occur after pumping stops. The effects of the more distant well are only slightly more modest - but they last much longer and the maximum depletion occurs several years after the well stops pumping.

Now this "hypothetical desert-basin aquifer" may remind you of somewhere - the Ranegras Valley of Arizona, perhaps? Where the Saudi conglomerate, Almarai, are growing alfalfa for export back home? Except that this hypothetical example only covers the effects of one well pumping: Almarai operate 18 wells, each one capable of pumping 4 or 5 times the lonely well in our hypothetical desert valley, and they have received permission to drill 8 more.

Now of course there is no flowing river in the Ranegras Valley, but there is Brouse Wash, ephemeral, yes (although prone to flash flooding), but clearly with water not far below the surface, given the vegetation and the occasional stock pond visible on Google Earth:

So the Brouse River probably flows just below the surface of the wash, and, if it flows at all, will not be doing so much longer as its water supplies the alfalfa.

The Brouse does, I believe, eventually supply modest volumes of water to the Colorado, and, interestingly, while I was researching and preparing this post, Matthew Miller and his colleagues at the USGS published a paper titled "The importance of base flow in sustaining surface water flow in the Upper Colorado River Basin", summarised by Science Daily. The research covered the upper Colorado basin (i.e. upstream from Lee's Ferry and the Grand Canyon) where 90% of the river's flow originates and the work documents that 60% of that flow is provided by groundwater. Subsequently, more than 80% of that groundwater is lost, by evapotranspiration and diversion for irrigation, before it reaches the lower river (where, amongst other problems, Lake Meade has recently been reported to be at its lowest level ever). The abstract for the paper puts it very succinctly:

The Colorado River has been identified as the most overallocated river in the world. Considering predicted future imbalances between water supply and demand and the growing recognition that base flow (a proxy for groundwater discharge to streams) is critical for sustaining flow in streams and rivers, there is a need to develop methods to better quantify present-day base flow across large regions....

Our results indicate that surface waters in the Colorado River Basin are dependent on base flow, and that management approaches that consider groundwater and surface water as a joint resource will be needed to effectively manage current and future water resources in the Basin.

Or, as Matthew Miller himself is quoted as saying, "In light of recent droughts, predicted climate changes and human consumption, there is an urgent need for us all to continue to think of groundwater and surface water as a single resource."

It couldn't have been put better - if you have made it through this post, thank you! And many thanks, as always, to the USGS.

Camels don't fly, deserts don't bloom

 

Back in November last year, I described how, very controversially, Arizona is exporting its water in vast quantities to Saudi Arabia, via alfalfa to feed Saudi cattle. In that post I quoted from the work of Elie Elhadj, who has compellingly documented the rape of the Kingdom's groundwater resources:

In 2004, Elie Elhadj of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), King’s College London published a blunt analysis of the extraordinary history of the destruction of the country’s water supplies. Titled “Camels Don’t Fly, Deserts Don’t Bloom: an Assessment of Saudi Arabia’s Experiment in Desert Agriculture” the report paints a catastrophic picture.

That experiment in desert agriculture is now essentially over, and Saudi Arabia relies almost entirely on imports of crops and cattle feed. In order to satisfy this need, the country's huge food and agriculture business, Almarai, buy farming land elsewhere in the world - including in the Arizona desert. Since I wrote that post, Almarai have added to their assets by buying land on the other side of the Colorado River in south-eastern California. Both California and Arizona are now in their fourth year of severe to exceptional drought.

After I quoted from his work, Elie contacted me and we commenced an email conversation that led to a fascinating and highly enjoyable meeting and discussion. He told me that he was in touch with a group of students at Arizona State University who were making a short video on the issues of exporting water to Saudi Arabia, and that video is now on line - it's extremely well done and worth watching:

Camels Don't Fly, Deserts Don't Bloom from Cassie Ronda on Vimeo.

There is an interesting cast of characters (in addition to Elie Elhadj himself): local residents who have seen the water levels in their wells drop 50 feet in four years, a lawyer for Almarai who, when talking about any link between water problems and agriculture, cheerfully states that "I don't think that's the case", local people agreeing that some form of regulation is needed as long as their water usage is not regulated, and Kathleen Ferris of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State, who comments that "It's almost impossible to manage groundwater without some kind of regulation." Such a statement may seem blindingly obvious, but the fact is that, in La Paz County Arizona there are no regulations whatsoever - anyone can arrive, drill as many wells as they want, and deplete the groundwater resources to whatever extent pleases them. 

This is madness. Consider the likely reaction of our old friend the alien scientist, flitting around the earth on a resource analysis mission and observing this scene:

 

"Wait a minute. There's the huge canal that they built to take water from the dwindling and over-exploited flow of the Colorado River, specifically to supply the city of Phoenix where groundwater supplies had been drastically depleted, and, right next to it are fields of water-sucking alfalfa grown to be exported as feed for Saudi cattle - this is no way to run a planet."

Yes, this may be madness for Arizona and California, but it's only part of a global-scale pattern of unsustainable insanity - and we should not be quick to judge Arizona. In a recent issue of the New Scientist, there was an interview with Arjen Hoekstra, a professor of water management at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, and founder of the Water Footprint Network. Hoekstra and his colleagues have developed a careful and extensive method of measuring water footprints, expressed as per capita usage country-by-country, and allocating the proportion of blue, green and gray water:

The WF is a measure of humans’ appropriation of freshwater resources and has three components: blue, green, and gray. The blue WF refers to consumption of blue water resources (surface and ground water), whereby consumption refers to the volume of water that evaporates or is incorporated into a product. The blue WF is thus often smaller than the water withdrawal, because generally part of a water withdrawal returns to the ground or surface water. The green WF is the volume of green water (rainwater) consumed, which is particularly relevant in crop production. The gray WF is an indicator of the degree of freshwater pollution and is defined as the volume of freshwater that is required to assimilate the load of pollutants based on existing ambient water quality standards.

 The title of the interview is "We can avoid a water crisis, but the fix will be hard to swallow" and, when asked "How is the UK doing in terms of water use?", he replied:

Because it imports so many goods, three-quarters of the UK’s water consumption is actually outside of its borders. And about half of that usage is not sustainable. For example, the UK imports rice and olives from southern Spain and sugarcane from Pakistan, regions where water is overexploited. This means groundwater levels are declining and rivers dwindling or drying up. That’s bad news for the exporting countries and for the UK, because these food sources will ultimately fail.

In terms of the broader region, Europe is the biggest net importer of water-intensive commodities in the world, much of it from water-scarce regions. In fact 40 per cent of Europe’s water footprint is outside the continent. A large part of that is unsustainable.

So let's not get too smug about Arizona, but, rather, worry about the large-scale problem. In terms of water footprint, domestic use is only a small part of the total - in Europe, the average consumer’s domestic use is typically only 1 to 2 per cent of their total water footprint. It's agriculture, what food we demand, where we choose to get it from, and how much we're prepared to pay for it that is the overwhelming factor. As Hoekstra comments

All food has a big water footprint, because agriculture is the largest water consumer. Grains generally have a water footprint in the order of 1000 litres per kilogram. Beef is, on average, 15,000 litres per kilogram. Both are big numbers but you can see that meat is in a league of its own. So your diet, and particularly how many animal products you eat, has a big impact on your personal water footprint.

Take a look at that link - it's at the same time fascinating and alarming.

But it's the blue water footprint that is of particular interest here and, fortunately, in one of his publications, Hoekstra breaks down specifically the blue water footprint by country and internal versus external, i.e., indigenous versus imported. Take a look at the whole, intriguing, paper where the graph appears in the supplementary materials. I have cropped the complete graph to start with the UK on the left and highlighted the UK, China, the US, Spain, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia - plus the world average in green.

Blue water footprint of national consumption for countries with a population larger than 5 million, shown by internal and external component (cubic meter per year per capita,1996–2005)

Take a good look at this graph and think through the overwhelming complexity of the issues. Countries whose footprint is relatively small may be dominantly importing other peoples' water - take the UK, for example. Countries whose footprint is large may be mainly consuming their own water but depleting and exporting it (see the US for example). There's an incredible set of questions and issues embedded in this graph, and add to this, overlay, Hoekstra's illustration of just the major global water flows:

Virtual water balance per country and direction of gross virtual water flows related to trade in agricultural and industrial products over the period 1996–2005. Only the biggest gross flows (>15 Gm3∕y) are shown.

By this measure, the US is not a net water importer. But then how much of its own water does it export? And then look at Europe.

I'm going to leave it there - you could write a book about it. In fact, Hoekstra has. To say that this is a thorny problem is a massive understatement - arguably has the makings of shorter-term crisis than climate change. What can we do about it? Well, in Hoekstra's words from the New Scientist interview, the fix can be hard to swallow:

We in northern Europe should realise that we are actually quite well off with water, and ask why we import water-intensive goods from water-scarce areas. It doesn’t make sense that we produce so little of our own food.

Isn’t this an inevitable effect of global markets?

Yes. We lose our own agriculture because elsewhere you have free water, cheap land, cheap labour. But it is not truly cheap; it is at the expense of the people over there, their land and their water. And in the long run, our own food supply is at risk. We need to change the rules of the market by discriminating in favour of sustainable production. It is a global challenge for agriculture, power generation, trade and economics, which we must work together to address. It’s a big deal, and it will only get bigger.

Our societies need to think long and hard about this - and read Hoekstra's latest paper: "Four billion people facing severe water scarcity."

 

Sand wars continue, unabated

It just doesn't stop, and the scale of the damage to communities and the environment is staggering.

NASA recently released the pair of images, above, showing changes to the sediment system of Poyang Lake and its rivers. The lake, these days much diminished in size, was once the largest freshwater lake in China, its water feeding into the Yangtze and providing an important haven for migrating birds. But when, in 2000, China shut down sand mining along the middle and lower Yangtze, the activity, legal and illegal, simply moved to Ponyang. The image on the left was acquired in 1995, the one on the right in 2013. The scale of devastation is obvious - try the "image comparison" feature for drama. 

The text accompanying the images describes the problem here (and elsewhere) in depressing detail:

When you see the vast expanses of sand in the Sahara and other major deserts, it is hard to comprehend how sand could ever be a resource in short supply. Yet for certain types, the supply of sand is indeed short.

For the construction industry, river and lake sand is more desirable than desert and ocean sand. To produce mortar for cement, concrete, and other building materials, the angular sand particles found in rivers and lakes are most useful. Making a strong mortar with the particles found in deserts—which are rounded by winds—is more challenging because the sand does not bind together as well. Likewise, ocean sand is mixed with salt, which can cause metals to corrode. Washing this marine sand can be time-consuming and expensive.

Over the past few decades, the global demand for construction sand has boomed, especially in Asia due to rapidurbanization. In China alone, the demand for cement has increased 438 percent over the past two decades,according to the United Nations Environmental Program.

In 2000, dredging and other sand mining become so intensive along the Yangtze River that Chinese authoritiesbanned the activity along the lower and middle reaches of the river. This drove many sand mining operators to Poyang Lake, a large body of water that flows into the Yangtze about 600 kilometers (400 miles) upstream ofShanghai.

This pair of false-color images captured by Landsat satellites shows the impact of sand mining on the northern reaches of Poyang Lake. The top image was acquired by the Thematic Mapper on Landsat 5 on December 7, 1995; the second image shows the same area as observed by Landsat 8’s Operational Land Imager on December 24, 2013. Water levels vary throughout the year at Poyang Lake, with the lowest levels occurring in winter.

By contrasting the two images, we can see dramatic changes in the outlet channel that connects Poyang Lake to the Yangtze river. Sand removal and dredging have deepened and widened the channel significantly. These activities also have left the remaining sandbars and shores with an irregular, serrated appearance. Turn on the comparison tool to see the changes.

As part of an effort to assess the scale of the sand mining and its environmental impacts, a group of researchers analyzed data collected by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) sensor on NASA’s Terra satellite. Using infrared data collected by ASTER in 2005, the researchers found that the lake was producing up to 236 million cubic meters of sand per year—about 9 percent of the total produced by China. The researchers estimated that the volume of sand removed was probably enough to make Poyang Lake the largest sand mining operation in the world.

“Sand mining has compromised the ecological integrity of the lake by contributing to less predictable seasonal water fluctuations and to a series of recent low water events,” said James Burnham, an ecologist with the University of Wisconsin and the International Crane Foundation. Burnhan has conducted field research on wintering waterbirds at Poyang Lake. “This is a lake that hosts 98 percent of the endangered Siberian Cranes and Oriental White Storks, as well as a significant number of over a dozen other endangered waterbirds in the winter.”

Google "sand" and news and, among the entertaining images of sand sculptures and odd reports such as the discovery of hundreds of kilos of marijuana buried in the dunes of South Padre Island, Texas, you will find, every day, endless reports of the issues of sand mining around the world. A sampling:

Vietnam, Nepal, India (endless problems, mafias, crime), Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia, the list goes on. The issues raised by the documentary, Sand Wars, have also been taken up by The Smithsonian, the United Nations, Wired, and Coastal Care. Numerous TV and radio programmes have covered the topic. And yet so few people are aware of it, and it just goes on and on.

 

Sunbathing in the microscopic desert jungle

The desert has its own palette, distinctive and at the same time subtle yet dramatic. There are many factors at work creating the patterns and hues of arid lands - obviously the kind of sand, the kind of rock, the vegetation, minerals and salts, desert varnish - but there are also artists at work that we can't see and barely understand: microbial communities.

We can see the mosses and the lichens, but the vast ecosystem of bacteria and fungi operates essentially invisibly; we are only beginning to scratch the surface of the desert to reveal the ubiquity and importance of microbial life in environments we often describe as "lifeless." These are communities labelled "cryptic" by biologists, a useful term disguising the fact that they are something we really don't understand very well. I found this definition helpful, from a piece in Nature a few years ago titled "Body doubles" by Alberto G. Sáez and Encarnación Lozano:

Have you ever approached someone whom you thought you knew, talked to him with familiarity, only to find out later that he was a complete stranger, albeit remarkably similar in appearance to the person you had in mind, such as a twin brother? Well, taxonomists are similarly puzzled when they come across two or more groups of organisms that are morphologically indistinguishable from each other, yet found to belong to different evolutionary lineages. That is, when they discover a set of cryptic species.

The microscopic cryptic communities of arid lands form the well-known "desert" or "cryptobiotic" crusts that we now realise play key roles in the ecosystem, cycling carbon dioxide and nitrogen, providing resources for plant life, controlling drainage and the hydrologic behaviour of the soil, and reducing erosion - and hence, atmospheric dust. 

Among the leading researchers shedding light on these cryptic communities is Ferran Garcia-Pichel at Arizona State University's School of Life Sciences. For example, in 2013, togather with international colleagues, he published a paper titled "Temperature Drives the Continental-Scale Distribution of Key Microbes in Topsoil Communities." Science summarises the work as follows:

Soil microorganisms make up a substantial fraction of global biomass, turning over carbon and other key nutrients on a massive scale. Although the soil protects them somewhat from daily temperature fluxes, the distribution of these communities will likely respond to gradual climate change. ... [We] surveyed bacterial diversity across a range of North American desert soils, or biocrusts—ecosystems in which photosynthetic bacteria determine soil fertility and control physical soil properties such as erodability and water retention. Most of the sites were dominated by one of two cyanobacterial species, but their relative proportions were controlled largely by factors related to temperature. Laboratory enrichment cultures of the two species at different temperatures also showed temperature as a primary determining factor of bacterial diversity. It is unknown if temperature will affect the distribution of other soil microorganisms, but the marked shifts of these two keystone bacterial species suggest further change is in store for these delicate ecosystems.

The work, only available behind the Science paywall, was helpfully reported by Live Science. The two dominant "keystone" bacterial species are  Microcoleus vaginatus and M. steenstrupii, the former preferring cooler conditions whereas the latter likes things hot. As temperatures vary, things become competitive and warming conditions result in the mysterious steenstrupii taking over. Now, because these communities are microscopic and cryptic, we can only measure such effects - and detect which organisms are in the soil - through sophisticated DNA analysis. It is further results of this kind of painstaking and careful work that Garcia-Pichel and his colleagues have just published in Nature. With Estelle Couradeau, also at Arizona State, as the lead author, the paper describes - startlingly - how "Bacteria increase arid-land soil surface temperature through the production of sunscreens." Microcoleus vaginatus and M. steenstrupii are far from alone, and, amongst their companions are tribes of cyanobacteria such as the hundreds of species belonging to the genera Scytonema and Tolypothrix. These little critters dislike the sun and apply a biosynthetic sunscreen, scytonemin, an alkaloid pigment that strongly absorbs solar radiation and dissipates this energy as heat. This sunscreen can be seen as patches of darker colour covering areas of desert crust, as in this photo by Garcia-Pichel from the recent report on Science Daily.

This pigmentation may protect some members of the bacterial community, but it can locally warm up the surface by as much as 10 degrees C (18 degrees F). This has a dramatic effect on the health of the cool-loving Microcoleus vaginatus, but is welcomed by M. steenstrupii, who come to dominate as the sunscreen develops, at the expense of vaginatus. As Garcia-Pichel comments:

... we can show that the darkening of the crust brings about important modifications in the soil microbiome, the community of microorganisms in the soil, allowing warm-loving types to do better. This warming effect is likely to speed up soil chemical and biological reactions, and can make a big difference between being frozen or not when it gets cold... On the other hand, it may put local organisms at increased risk when it is already quite hot.

And this has to be happening on a global scale. As Estelle Coradeau suggests, "Because globally they cover some 20 percent of Earth's continents, biocrusts, their microbes and sunscreens must be important players in global heat budgets. We estimate that there must be some 15 million metric tons of this one microbial sunscreen compound...warming desert soils worldwide."

But because we have only a poor understanding of what exactly these desert crusts are and how they work, their roles in local ecology and global systems are impossible to define. It is only through the meticulous work of Ferran Garcia-Pichel and his team, together with others such as Jayne Belnap of the USGS in Moab, Utah, that we can begin to unravel the extraordinary nature and contributions of these long-ignored microbial desert communities. As Belnap has commented:

These are the only game in town to prevent dust storms and erosion, so they're really, really critical parts of this ecosystem. Yet we've never asked the question, 'who's really in there, and what's going to happen there as things shift?'

and, as reported in a piece on Belnap in High Country News, the palette and patterns of our arid lands owe much to an invisible living world: 

She also remains convinced that the dark shadows on the desert are the true — and fragile — foundation of the Colorado Plateau. "Whenever we pull on the thread of what makes the system tick," she says, "we end up with soil crusts on the other end."

[See also Belnap's USGS site at www.soilcrust.org. Crust photos credit: Linda and Dr. Dick Buscher, Live  Science "The Mysterious World of Cryptobiotic Soil."]

 

 

A Reverence for Rivers (2)

Turn on the tap in your kitchen so that it's running at a typical (if not particularly conservative) rate of around three US gallons per minute. Ensure that your drain is working well and leave it flowing for 17 years. By then you will have used the amount of water that the State of California consumes in one minute. 

Return after one year and you will have used roughly the volume of groundwater extracted from the Central Valley in one minute.

Last month, I started what I intended to be a series of posts stimulated by "A Reverence for Rivers," the title of the address given by the great hydrogeologist, Luna Leopold, to California Governor Jerry Brown's Drought Conference held nearly thirty years ago. Leopold threw down some challenges in the "philosophy of water management" to an audience that represented all the stakeholders in management of the state's water supplies at a time of what was then a record drought. Today, those records continue to be broken as California enters its fifth consecutive year of drought, and, for much of the state, the third year of "extreme," never mind "exceptional" drought. Yes, some relief is being provided by El Nino precipitation, but that does nothing to change the drought crisis - as shown by the US Drought Monitor image above. At the end of 2014, a NASA analysis indicated that "It will take about 11 trillion gallons of water (42 cubic kilometers) -- around 1.5 times the maximum volume [potential capacity] of the largest U.S. reservoir -- to recover from California's continuing drought." That was a year ago and it's only got worse. At the time of that report, some rains had arrived, but

“It’s not time to start watering your grass,” said Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and the lead researcher of the new analysis. “Looking at the numbers, it’s probably going to take about three years to fill the hole.”

The NASA team found that the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins, key water sources for cities and farms, lost 4 trillion gallons of water each year since 2011, most of it from farmers tapping the underground supply because rivers and reservoirs were low.

How can California still find itself in this amount of trouble when, nearly thirty years ago, in his first incarnation as drought Governor, Brown declared that “this is an era of limits and there are some very hard choices to be made”? One of the reasons that I have only now embarked on this episode of the series of posts is that there are no easy answers, and research and fact-checking leads only into a black hole of conflicting data, never mind the labyrinthine political abyss of western water politics, policy and history. It is clear that, post 1997, Brown and some of the more enlightened interests in California attempted to embark on reform and future drought preparation - but many of the choices proved to be too hard. Yes, there were initiatives to reduce domestic and municipal consumption and these lasted, although Brown, in his second drought incarnation, still had to declare a State of Emergency in January 2014, and a year later, the first ever state-wide mandatory water reductions. Individual Californians and communities have dramatically reduced their consumption (with the notable exception of Beverly Hills celebrities and billionaires), but by far the largest proportion of the 38 billion gallons per day consumed by California goes to agriculture - and therein lies the rub. 

Exactly how much water does Californian agriculture use? Well, incredibly nobody really knows and nobody has the day-to-day measurements to know. You can easily, depending on the sources and assumptions, find estimates from 40% to 80% of total water use. In order to find a single group of statistics that have some credibility, it's worth consulting a report put out by the Congressional Research Service in June 2015. Attempting to rationalize the data differences, it is titled California Agricultural Production and Irrigated Water Use and begins:

California ranks as the leading agricultural state in the United States in terms of farm-level sales. In 2012, California’s farm-level sales totaled nearly $45 billion and accounted for 11% of total U.S. agricultural sales. Five counties—Tulare, Kern, Fresno, Monterey, and Merced—rank among the leading agricultural counties in the nation.

Given current drought conditions in California, however, there has been much attention on the use of water to grow agricultural crops in the state. Depending on the data source, irrigated agriculture accounts for roughly 40% to 80% of total water supplies. Such discrepancies are largely based on different survey methods and assumptions, including the baseline amount of water estimated for use (e.g., what constitutes “available” supplies). Two primary data sources are the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). USGS estimates water use for agricultural irrigation in California at 25.8 million acre-feet (MAF), accounting for 61% of USGS’s estimates of total withdrawals. DWR estimates water use withdrawals for agricultural irrigation at 33 MAF, or about 41% of total use. Both of these estimates are based on available data for 2010. These estimates differ from other widely cited estimates indicating that agricultural use accounts for 80% of California’s available water supplies, as reported in media and news reports.

The differences result from arcane variations in the definitions of the words "use," consumption," "withdrawals," and "application." Welcome to the rabbit-hole of terminology, both technical and political. Oh, and also welcome to the "acre-foot."  An acre-foot is a volume of water equal to 325,851 gallons (around 1200 cubic metres) and represents the amount of water needed to flood an acre of land one foot deep. In the US, it is the long-standing measure of water volume.

Since Brown's initiatives following the 1970s drought, water use has dropped, partly as a result of domestic frugality, partly following increased efficiency irrigation systems - and the brutal realities of maintaining agriculture in a semi-arid land. However, the USGS reports that California in 2010 remained the chart-topper of all US states for water consumption - more than half again as much as the runner-up, Texas. And the USGS estimates that agriculture accounts for 60% of the state's thirst.

Any, even brief, review of media reports will reveal that to say that this is a controversial topic is a gross understatement. Vested interests, lobbies, open and hidden agendas, battle for dominance in issues scarcely tainted by facts or science. And these arguments also take place in a virtually policy-free environment - water regulations and laws in the arid Western US are labyrinthine, opaque, complex beyond normal comprehension and certainly unfit for purpose, particularly in California. In 1991, during yet another drought, Peter Passell, an economics writer for the New York Times, wrote that California's water system - infrastructure and laws - "might have been invented by a Soviet bureaucrat on an LSD trip... While this infrastructure was built with state and Federal money, the benefits are by tradition (and, hazily, by law) reserved for the private interests who lobbied for its construction." 

California's surface water supply system resembles nothing more than a Heath Robinson contraption or a Rube Goldberg machine, deliberately over-engineered to perform a simple task in a complicated fashion. But at least the State Government has some ability to regulate it. In a normal year that's an ability to attempt to manage and allocate perhaps 70% of the state's water consumption. In a typical drought year that drops to less than 40%. In extreme drought conditions, the state can - and does - dramatically reduce surface water allocations but then where does the other 60-70% come from? Groundwater. Over which the government has virtually no control whatsoever. It doesn't even have the knowledge or the data to manage its groundwater, never mind the legal ability to do so.

And here is the vital fact that is mostly ignored or unknown in political and commercial circles, largely because it's highly inconvenient: surface water and groundwater are part of the same system, the hydrological cycle - mess with one and you mess with the other. 

Over 60 years ago, Luna Leopold and his colleague, Harold Thomas, wrote an article titled "Ground Water in North America: The fast-growing demands on this natural resource expose a need to resolve many hydrologic unknowns." Here's an extract:

There are enough examples of streamflow depletion by ground-water development, and of ground-water pollution from wastes released into surface waters, to attest to the close though variable relation between surface water and ground water.

Man has coped with the complexity of water by trying to compartmentalize it. The partition committed by hydrologists—into ground water, soil water, surface water, for instance—is as nothing compared with that which has been promulgated by the legal profession, which has on occasion borrowed from the criminal code to term some waters "fugitive" and others, a "common enemy." The legal classification of water includes "percolating waters," "defined underground streams," "underflow of surface streams," "water-courses." and "diffuse surface waters"; all these waters are actually interrelated and interdependent, yet in many jurisdictions unrelated water rights rest upon this classification

Water habitually does not subscribe to our efforts at compartmentalization according to special interests in irrigation, industrial use, recreational use, municipal use; or to allocations of fields for the chemist, for the geologist, for the sanitary engineer, for the physicist, for this or that government agency, any more than it does to separation into areas bounded by property lines, county lines, state lines, or even some river-basin boundaries. As the areas of heavy demand expand toward each other and the necessity for water management increases, these artificial boundaries and classifications will have to yield more and more to the realities of the hydrologic cycle.

Ah yes, the lessons we have learned in 60 years. In an article in July of last year for the New York Times, Abrahm Lustgarten, an environmental reporter for ProPublica, summarized a report he had written for the site (the whole piece is well-worth reading). From the summary, titled "How the West Overcounts Its Water Supplies": 

In California, the state’s water agency has said that the failure to account for how groundwater withdrawals affect the state’s rivers is a major impediment to a true accounting of its resources. In April, authorities reported that less than half of the state’s local water agencies had complied with a 2002 law that made them eligible for state funds only if they set up groundwater management plans and determined if a connection between surface water and groundwater existed. That connection does not exist uniformly and varies depending on local geology. Only 17 percent of the state’s groundwater basins had been examined.

Indeed, California still doesn’t require that water pumped from underground be measured at all, much less factored into an overall assessment of total water resources; it’s merely an option under a new law signed last September.

California’s new groundwater legislation does require local water authorities to come up with sustainable groundwater plans, but they don’t have to do that until 2020, and they don’t have to balance their water withdrawals until 2040.

So fierce was the pushback by the agriculture industry against any regulation of underground water that the new law, somewhat perversely, explicitly barred any attempt by the state to count the groundwater withdrawals as coming from one overall water supply until local agencies had at least 10 more years to come up with — and implement — their plans.

“Those who have unlimited water supply don’t particularly like the idea of changing that,” said Fran Pavley, a Democrat and the California state senator who drafted two of the three bills that became the groundwater law. “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

Thomas Buschatzke, the director of Arizona’s Department of Water Resources, acknowledged that pumping from wells could dry up streams, but said the current law kept the two resources separate, and “it would be a huge upset to the economy to do away with that.”

But John Bredehoeft, a leading hydrogeologist and former director of the federal government’s Western states water program, bluntly emphasized the importance of basic honesty in counting water.

“If you don’t connect the two, then you don’t understand the system,” he said. “And if you don’t understand the system, I don’t know how in the hell you’re going to make any kind of judgment about how much water you’ve got to work with.”

Until state officials do, it seems unlikely that there will be any real solution to managing the Southwest’s strained water resources for the future.

And, in the words of Jay Famiglietti:

Managing our water in this context will require an overhaul of existing water policy that matches our modern understanding of the water cycle. Surface and groundwater are tightly interconnected and should be managed accordingly. The rule of capture for groundwater worked exceedingly well when we shot bears with muskets. Let's not kid ourselves that we're great stewards when most of our available water -- groundwater -- is still offered up in a land rush.

We must treat and price water as the precious commodity that it truly is. That means conserve, reuse, recycle, and then do it all over again. Enhanced conservation and efficiency is cheap, easy, and incredibly effective.

So, turn on your tap for a year and contemplate the disappearance of groundwater in California's Central Valley every minute. You could at least rush home and turn off the tap - the government of the State of California can't. We'll talk about all this some more in the next episode...  

 

 

A Reverence for Rivers (1)

 

From the New York Times:

Los Angeles

Brown Warns of Drought Disaster; Says ‘Hard Choices’ Face California

Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. warned here today that drought-stricken California was “facing a disaster of immeasurable magnitude.”

“The specter of drought has been gathering momentum, not only in California but across the country,” the Democratic Governor declared, adding that people must learn that “this is an era of limits and there are some very hard choices to be made.”

 

Well, yes indeed, but the limits have proved difficult to respect, and the right choices challenging to make – that was a report from March 1977. In January 2014, not far off forty years later, Governor Jerry Brown reprised his earlier role and declared a state of emergency:

We can’t make it rain, but we can be much better prepared for the terrible consequences that California’s drought now threatens, including dramatically less water for our farms and communities and increased fires in both urban and rural areas. I’ve declared this emergency and I’m calling all Californians to conserve water in every way possible.

Given the historic (and largely unpredictable) nature of Californian aridity, it’s inevitable that, if you are a sufficient glutton for punishment to become governor twice, you will experience a couple of droughts. Unfortunately, Jerry Brown has been in charge for two of the worst – indeed, the current drought has broken essentially every historical record. But it is interesting to contemplate how, given the recognition of limits and hard choices forty years ago, we couldn’t be “much better prepared” today.

The 1977 news report was covering a two-day “Governor’s Drought Conference attended by about 800 water district officials, farmers, ranchers and other interested persons,” among the last category being the keynote speaker, Luna Leopold. The son of the influential conservationist and author, Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, Luna became one of the world’s leading hydrologists during the latter half of the last century. He revolutionised and quantified for the first time the science of fluvial geomorphology and changed the way we think about rivers, how they and their landscapes work, and their role in the grand scheme of things – “Water is the most critical resource issue of our lifetime and our children’s lifetime. The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land.” He was, incidentally, also a close friend of, and collaborator with, my hero, Ralph Bagnold – I have a recording of the address he gave at Bagnold’s memorial service, his words made all the more compelling by the deep resonance of his voice.

But, back to the Los Angeles Convention Center in March 1977. You can’t help but be impressed that Brown invited Leopold to give the keynote address, but it seems likely that the governor and the ranchers were somewhat bemused to be told, in the speaker’s first, undoubtedly resonant, words, about Herodotus. 

Leopold titled his address A Reverence for Rivers. The full text is available online, but I shall extract from it here because I – and I hope that I’m not alone - find it not only provocative but as relevant today as it was nearly forty years ago. It’s stimulating food for thought – and a few posts.

Here are his opening words:

In the years around 450 B.C., that is about 2,400 years ago, the most widely travelled of the time was Herodotus. His book The Persian Wars differs from any previous written history in that he was conscious of the influences of geography, climate, and social custom in the direction of development of political and economic history of a state.
In all the intervening time, we seem not to have learned how the political and economic aspects of our lives are related to geography and climate, nor have we been able to bend social custom to accept the constraints placed on us by geography and climate.

“In all the intervening time” since 1977, we don’t seem to have learned a great deal either.

He goes on discuss our approach to renewable and non-renewable resources and comments that “it can hardly be called management”:

The management of resources cannot be carried out successfully if it is looked upon as just another facet of economics, administration, and politics. Yet the latter view describes rather accurately our present approach to resource use (it can hardly
be called management).

Being the scientist that he was, he asserts that “renewable resources”

... are parts of operating natural systems that can be deranged with very troublesome results. The hydrologic system of precipitation, streamflow, sediment, dissolved salts, ground water and evapotranspiration is typical of a system that can be deranged. Moreover, such operating systems are subject to natural fluctuations resulting from climate and geography. These fluctuations can be lessened but not eliminated.

I love that wording – the troublesome results from deranging natural operating systems. He goes on to acknowledge to his drought-stricken California audience that “none of us knows how to put into operation a philosophy of water management,” but suggests that a crisis offers some advantages in attracting attention to a problem and that “there may be some merit in examining some of the elements that might be included in such a philosophy.”

He recognised that his audience might not be instinctively sympathetic to “philosophic points of view” and proceeded to counter three possible “contrary arguments”:

(1) Our technology can fix it; (2) It is politically impossible; and (3) It is an example of the impractical idealism of crackpot environmentalists.

I will return to Leopold’s discussion of the first two, but his response to number three is a potent summary of his own philosophy and something that resonates today – at least with me:

… there is a balance or harmony in natural systems which, dictated by the laws of physics, has gradually developed during the 4 billion years of Earth's history. The maintenance of this balance is not only to the advantage of human organization,
but should be the object of both our wonder and our admiration. The desire to preserve this harmony must also be incorporated into any philosophy of water management, and I will call this, as did Herodotus, a reverence for rivers. If this is environmental idealism, then let it be said that I am an idealist.

So where, exactly, does Herodotus fit in to all this? Quite how Luna Leopold’s audience responded is lost in the mists of time, but he described how

Speaking of the Persians who dominated Asia Minor in the 5th century B.C., Herodotus said, "They never defile a river with the secretions of their bodies, nor even wash their hands in one; nor will they allow others to do so, as they have a great reverence for rivers." It is the last phrase that deserves our attention. The river is like an organism; it is internally self-adjusting. It is also resilient and can absorb changes imposed upon it, but not without limit.

So, having cast a somewhat different light on Brown's "era of limits," he concluded that

Man's engineering capabilities are nearly limitless. Our economic views are too insensitive to be the only criteria for judging the health of the river organism. What is needed is a gentler basis for perceiving the effects of our engineering capabilities. This more humble view of our relation to the hydrologic system requires a modicum of reverence for rivers.

Given the derangement of our planet’s river and sediment systems that we have accomplished, before and after 1977, you have to wonder whether we – now stuck in the Anthropocene – have any reverence at all. But I believe that, for whatever difference it might possibly make, it’s still worth listening to Luna Leopold.

To be continued…

[Image at the head of the post Lucy Nicholson/Reuter/Baltimore Sun, caption: "Discarded shopping carts lie   in the dry Tule river bed in Porterville, California October 14, 2014. In one of the towns hardest hit by California’s drought, the only way some residents can get water to flush the toilet is to drive to the fire station, hand-pump water into barrels and take it back home. The state’s three-year drought comes into   sharp focus in Tulare County, the dairy and citrus heart of the state’s vast agricultural belt, where more than 500 wells have dried up."

Image above, Kelly M. Grow/California Department of Water Resources: The South Fork of the Feather River feeding Lake Oroville on Sept. 5, 2014.]

 

Time, Sense, and Landscape

 

I was delighted (and flattered) to be invited to participate in a multi-disciplinary symposium, held in Winchester in October, titled Chalk: Time, Sense, and Landscape, part of the town’s biannual 10 day arts festival. Winchester is securely rooted in the chalk, but while this was the overall theme title of the festival, and inspired by Thomas Huxley’s public lecture On a Piece of Chalk, this symposium ranged widely over distinctly non-calcareous themes. Organised by sound artist Sebastiane Hegarty, its aims were to explore “worlds beyond and beneath the visible” and “sound and the unseen or imagined landscape.”

I thought long and hard as to how the views of a geologist might contribute to these themes and decided to explore the cultural and individual perceptions of landscape that I had touched on in The Desert. Borrowing from Antoine de Exupéry, I titled the talk “Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…” and, given the interest of the audience in soundscapes, began with a recording of booming sand dunes – the acoustics and the sound set-up were so good that even I was startled.  

The summary of the talk was as follows:

As the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry remind us, the landscapes of the desert notoriously play havoc with all human senses. Rare sounds become amplified, aromas, other than some kind of unfathomable minerality, are entirely absent, and the range of what seems visible becomes exaggerated. Our sense of scale is comprehensively challenged – a single sand grain and a sea of dunes vie for our attention (and seem equally fascinating). The great chronicler of the deserts of the American southwest, Edward Abbey, wrote: “There is something about the desert that human sensibility cannot assimilate.” Our response to what is seen, and unseen, is very much subjective and cultural, the perception of landscape, time, and scale being quite different for the insider and the outsider. And then there are the stories that the landscape tells the geologist…

I have now been alerted to a review of the symposium by Jodie Dalgleish for the New Zealand based art review EyeContact, and her full essay. I much appreciate her discussion of my talk, and, throwing all modesty to the desert wind, take the liberty of copying it here.

Shifting Topologies 

Beginning the second part of the day, geologist, sand expert and author Michael Welland charges my imagination with a desert field recording, made by French researcher Stéphane Douady. It sets up palpable vibrations within the room, an elemental sonic shaking and fullness, bringing to my mind Don Ihde’s description, in Listening and Voice, of the auditory imagination as a sound field that surrounds and invades the imagining subject and places them at the centre of their own auditory space. Revealed by Welland to be the singing, or booming, of a sand dune—40 of which have been identified by geologists as unique in their song from Chile to the Gobi Desert, it is a natural and known sensory part of the Bedouins’ life and environment, with given names for such places ‘the mountain of drums’ and ‘the thunder of singers.’ Referring also to the aboriginal people of Australia, Welland recounts the affecting story of the way Alfred Canning forged a stock-route in the first decade of the 20th century, constructing 51 wells across the ‘outback,’ capturing indigenous inhabitants and torturing them for the location of their water sources. Canning’s resulting map shows a strip through the landscape, defined only by his route and wells. Whereas, a 3.2 x 5 metre painting, Martumili Ngurra (This is all Martu’s Home), made in 2009 by six Matu women of the Martumili collective, reveals a network of stories, information and knowledge in a desert that is far from empty, a living and sung landscape where every part is named, over generations. As Welland illustrates further, with reference to Yi-fu Tuan’s landmark book of humanistic and philosophical geography Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes, and Values, there is an unseen ‘landscape’ that is formed by a cultural and personal view. Concepts such as time, scale and horizon change drastically depending on where you have made your home, and what you have learned. For him, as a geologist, the Sahara Desert is also, simultaneously, the Green Sahara with its verdant green valleys and the detailed traces of rivers etched in stone beneath the sand. ‘Landscape,’ I am reminded, is always a flexible cultural construct, and ‘place,’ one of the affective bond of inhabitation. In my own mind since, I am made to wonder about the soundscape, such as that of a field recording. What does the inhabitant, and the inhabiting recorder, of a visible, or non-visible, place understand and imagine vis-a-vis someone from an entirely different place, and does it matter? Does the sound of the not fully known, such as Welland’s dune song, open auditory spaces more fundamental to experience, as might the detail of the known open spaces to another kind of attention? And how might a topographical understanding of ourselves and our environments affect us as artists and makers?

Thank you, Jodie, and thank you Sebastiane for inviting me in the first place – I enjoyed immensely thinking and working on the talk and the diverse and stimulating events of the day. And thanks to Victoria Rick for the photo.