Sustainable groundwater management Marc F.P. Bierkens Department - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Sustainable groundwater management Marc F.P. Bierkens Department of Physical Geography Utrecht University Global water demand Livestock (Globe: 16 km 3 ) Irrigation (Globe: 1376 km 3 ) million m 3 /year Industry (Globe: 257 km 3 ) Households
Department of Physical Geography Utrecht University
Livestock (Globe: 16 km3) Irrigation (Globe: 1376 km3) Industry (Globe: 257 km3) Households (Globe: 199 km3)
million m3/year
Wada et al., HESS, 2011
> 20% of the global groundwater consumption for irrigation comes from non-renweable groundwater
Gleeson, et al., Nature, 2012. Global groundwater footprint = 3.5 times the global area of productive aquifers
Fraction of non-sustainable water use
Wada and Bierkens, 2014
De Graaf et al., 2015
Cause: no global information on subsoil properties?
3H (Tritium) data are used to estimate the
distribution of groundwater with depth. This allows one to estimate modern groundwater (< 50 years):
Groundwater models Comparing different aquifer depths and permeabilities with estimates based on isotopes
Groundwater depletion
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