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So, how do you refill an aquifer?

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Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#11

Post by Dig1t »

For further reading on aquifers I highly recommend https://www.edwardsaquifer.net

It's run by a scientist in Texas and has an amazing wealth of information on the aquifers of Texas. I never thought I would find a subject like this interesting until I read this guy's site.

Texas has been managing aquifers for a long time, there's a rich history behind their management, and reading about this stuff has been the only way I've found to make geology interesting. Many of the lessons learned and policies employed in Texas likely would be very useful in California.

Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#12

Post by bcrosby95 »

nawgz wrote: post #8
AlbertCory wrote: post #6

CA is on a very short fuse to do this, since there's all that snow from the winter that's melting or about to. I've been wondering about that myself. What I would like to see is the gross numbers: what percent of this year's precipitation is going to flow into the ocean? Anyone?

Given that all the snow at Tahoe will flow into Truckee river and evaporate in Nevada... Can't imagine it's that high a percentage, to be honest.

Snowpack is a huge deal in California, as around 30% of the state's water comes from snowmelt in the Sierras. They don't track it for funsies: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/snowapp/sweq.action

Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#13

Post by s1artibartfast »

nawgz wrote: post #8
AlbertCory wrote: post #6

CA is on a very short fuse to do this, since there's all that snow from the winter that's melting or about to. I've been wondering about that myself. What I would like to see is the gross numbers: what percent of this year's precipitation is going to flow into the ocean? Anyone?

Given that all the snow at Tahoe will flow into Truckee river and evaporate in Nevada... Can't imagine it's that high a percentage, to be honest.

The Sierra nevada mountain range has two sides. The vast majority of snowmelt runs downhill into California.

The is more to the mountain range than Tahoe and more to the river system than the Truckee.

You can take a look at the California river system to get a sense of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_California#/...

Not many rivers flow east and the truckee is failrly small.

The annual flow from the Truckee is 303,240 acre-feet, which is about %1 of the Sacramento river

Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#14

Post by jubjubbird »

onecommentman wrote: post #4

Albuquerque has been doing this since 2007. “More ambitiously, however, the Water Authority in 2007 initiated a pilot program for aquifer storage and recovery, in which a small amount of San Juan-Chama water was released into the Bear Canyon arroyo and tracked to see if it reached the aquifer. Results were positive, and the Water Authority is moving forward with plans to recharge the aquifer on a larger scale. We wil…

Speaking of Albuquerque, this just-published paper shows how measuring the change in acceleration due to gravity can be used to map aquifer storage change. Importation of San Juan River water has made a big difference.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2023.101413

Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#15

Post by Throw73849 »

vkou wrote: post #10
Throw73849 wrote: post #9

Some projects are pumping CO2 underground to reduce global warming. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Maybe we could use some of that money and equipment, to pump water underground!

The greenhouse coefficient of water vapour is, pound-for-pound, about one hundredth that of CO2. There's also no meaningful amount of water that can be sequestered, given there's about 10^18 tonnes of it in the world's oceans.

It may be still more efficient to pump water underground. Isolating CO2 is very energy intensive, for the same amount of energy we may isolate 100x more H2O. Sometimes it even condenses spontaneously!

There is also huge amount of natural CO2, single vulcano eruption... It is about reducing green house gas emissions generated by humans. And there are many artificial lakes, fields and forests that generate huge footprint on water vapour..

Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#16

Post by HPsquared »

Throw73849 wrote: post #9

Some projects are pumping CO2 underground to reduce global warming. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Maybe we could use some of that money and equipment, to pump water underground!

Water vapour is a greenhouse gas but, confusingly, clouds can have either cooling or warming effects. The interactions are pretty complex.

Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#17

Post by pgrote »

Aquifers are intriguing. They are so large a person has a hard time realizing over a period of time how the land is affected when they are tapped. Subsidence is hard to wrap your head around.

San Joaquin Valley is a good example.

https://www.mantecabulletin.com/news/local-news/san-joaquin-...

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/location-maximum-land-subs...

Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#18

Post by aurizon »

I have often felt the ogallala aquifer could be recharged by diverting some of the great lakes spring runoff into the Atlantic via canals as well as via one of the many gravel buried moraines that connect with and now recharge the ogallala. Not sure how this would affect the Atlantic, but 5-10% of it would go a long way to help the lowering of the Ogallala over the pat 100 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#19

Post by mech422 »

Dig1t wrote: post #11

For further reading on aquifers I highly recommend https://www.edwardsaquifer.net It's run by a scientist in Texas and has an amazing wealth of information on the aquifers of Texas. I never thought I would find a subject like this interesting until I read this guy's site. Texas has been managing aquifers for a long time, there's a rich history behind their management, and reading about this stuff has been the only wa…

Phoenix is the same way. They do a really good job managing water supplies - for aquifers in particular (PHX sits on top of an underground lake) they use huge 'ponds' to let the water soak back into the aquifer.

Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?

#20

Post by candiddevmike »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #7
maerF0x0 wrote: post #3

Requiring farms to have ponds/wells could be a way to create a distributed solution. Joel Salatin has been teaching about the value of ponds for decades now. for example here's a video of him talking about ponds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o82ar51eIsE This will require the water boards to rethink things like not allowing capture of rainwater/flow. The evaporation of ponds becomes somewhere else's rainwater (poten…

Owning property with a pond has it's own issues. In many of those farms run off can be detrimental. We have a 3/4 an acre pond and while we don't farm anywhere near it, the few springs that feed it all touch a lot of farm lands. So far we're lucky, but just a quarter mile down the road, our neighbors have a pond that won't sustain life, which we suspect is due to runoff from their crops. There's also the issue of exc…

Would organic farming help here? Seems like there are studies [1] showing nitrate leaching is less with it. Probably reducing cattle/chicken counts too, as those shit pits are a big source of it.

1 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01678...

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