The small scale of the effort currently makes me a little skeptical that it's achieving anything. Underground water is impossible to measure.
What might be more effective and certainly more measurable would be to build a dam/reservoir.
> Infiltrated water is retained for an average of 45 d before resurfacing, confirming the system’s ability to contribute to dry-season flows. We estimate that upscaling the system to the source-water areas of the city of Lima can potentially delay 99 × 106 m3 yr−1 of streamflow and increase dry-season flows by 7.5% on average, which may provide a critical complement to conventional engineering solutions for water security.
In page 15, table 2 they show that they put some Eosin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eosin upstream before the water entered the earth, and then they collected water from the springs downstream a few weeks later and measure how much Eosin was there, and used this to estimate how long the water was stored.
Although it seems impossible to measure how much water is stored in the deep soil, it is often possible to notice if it runs out. We had that last summer in the Netherlands. I suppose knowing we reached zero, and knowing the influx (mm rain, and the flow of the Rhine), and then also knowing the outflow means you can make a some sound estimate.
However, that requires a high density of weather stations and tooling at the influx and outputs.
It's not something you can just do through some regulation targeted at the water company. You'll need a specific branch of the government, since messing with water affects everyone, from erosion to trade, to agriculture to climate (the presence of water makes the climate a more mild climate)
In the Netherlands, this is all done by an independent water government, a democracy older than our democracy itself. It even predates notions of citizenship.
I guess there are some ways to work out permeability and volume based on how the levels at one well are affected by activity at the next well.
Always an ironic comment!
I'll go find a doctor. That was definitely not my intention.
Wait... that doesn't sound right.
Further, if water goes into a pit, you can measure or estimate how much is going in. If you can measure the shape of the pit you know how much is there. If you know surface area at a given level and temp/environmental conditions you can estimate evaporation. So you can say: X vol went in, Y evaporated, and Z is how much we now think is ground water based on current depth and evaporation (excluding animals and humans drinking).
It is much harder to associate the pit activity with a given well and obviously the scale here may be below the precision of any of the estimators.
Simple diversion of water is not what was discussed. Thank you for the summation, but you summarized the non-relevant information.
> The small scale of the effort currently makes me a little skeptical that it's achieving anything. Underground water is impossible to measure.
Even if you are not familiar with how vegetation works, there is proof contained later in the article. They discuss how removing portions of peat land caused the surrounding plants to dry out and die.