I’m very naive in this space. What percent of water extracted makes its way back into the water table and how long does it take? I assume you lose some to the plant that is harvested and some to evaporation. But how much makes it back?
This is why most groundwater pumping is properly called water mining.
Amazing - if it was a mineral or metal then there would be a mining company charging market rates for the mining … what is happening in this case?
How much water is extracted from air by PV panels that output H2O, and what are the impacts?
Do drilling and fracking consume lots of water and create holes through aquifers? Do holes in aquifers cause aquifers to drain out to lower chambers of the earth?
Historically, people have moved to where the water is.
Is there a subsurface ocean on Earth or Mars?
Is there enough of a thermal gradient between very deep wells and surface water to generate energy?
How many humans operating humanoid robots operating construction equipment does to take to build irrigation canals?
Perhaps helpful new solar distillation tech for #Goal6 #CleanWater:
- "Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water" (2023) : "Extreme salt-resisting multistage solar distilation with thermohaline convection" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39507692
Perhaps there are already sustainable salt-tolerant plants without GM; algae, kelp, sargassum
There is plenty of salt water on Earth. Does life on earth depend upon and/or derive from ocean thermohaline cycles?
Water harvesting has been successfully applied to thousands of villages in India and parts of northern Africa.
The Paani Foundation is especially amazing, as they annually lift hundreds of villages from dry wells and tanker dependence to tens of feet of water in wells and ponds in as little as one rain season using nothing but planning and cheap labour (the villagers).
Tilling turns topsoil to dirt due to solar radiation.
No-till farming methods like residue mulching prevent soil depletion and retain water in topsoil; in order to create healthy soil as an output.
Hugelkultur is basically residue mulching and rainwater catchment.
Removing all of the trees reduces the level of water in the air and soil.
What sorts of agricultural machines can service bunds, raised beds, and hugelkultur mounds instead of rows?
and oxidation.
So 65% makes it back.
The best, and my opinion only reasonable, answer to that kind of scenario is to just not intervene. We shouldn't be sucking water out of aquifers at such a scale that the water level drops when we have no idea of the long term impacts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39732506
> ... ground water shortages. Reason: farmers like irrigating their land (much of it below sea level) with ground water because it is cheap ...