So, how do you refill an aquifer?
31–40 of 95 posts
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#32Some regions in India with wet and dry seasons have been successfully doing this for some time now. Interestingly, the very high precipitation during the wet season allowed them to achieve improvement without megaprojects, instead focusing on outreach campaigns to teach many small farmers to build recharge wells and water slowing features (frequent small dams) on runoff streams on their land to foster ground absorpti…
Slowing down water is the key and there are many design patterns that achieve this. You don’t even need to build structures (like when we envision with the word “dam”).
Even digging a small trench that follows contours in the upland helps water infiltrate into the ground. The dirt you dig out can be piled up as a bearm.
The permaculture community the world over has been putting these design patterns for decades now, and they drew from ideas found in pre-modern societies.
Brad Lancaster wrote an excellent multi-volume book about water harvesting structures, including taking into account erosion and silt deposit patterns, and working with plants. He calls it “planting the rain”.
It doesn’t have to be in places with wet and dry seasons. In much of temperate climates of the US, beavers modified the flow of the rivers such that the surface water was able to meander a much greater surface than the main flow of the river. It supported the trees and vegetation, which in turn formed habitat.
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#33There is a California-specific law called the Subdivision Map Act that requires cities/counties to have provisions for parks when approving new subdivisions and housing. The specifics of this is super convoluted and left to the interpretation of the city and its planning done at the county. What would be amazing is to add a certain percentage to lakes and ponds when new parks are created--and not just green field. Ho…
Surface water in the desert ... that could easily backfire.
I think a related idea that might be more appropriate is requiring drainage areas that slow water flow and increase absorption.
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#34For 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.
We have to. Arizona is at the bottom of the water rights agreement among the states drawing from the Colorado River. I see a lot of water harvesting structures here, often in the form of parks and greenways.
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#35For 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…
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Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#36The article needlessly mentions the Murzuk-Djado Basin and the Arabian Basin as having "little hope of recharging", when the very study it cites shows that the Murzuk-Djado basin as being less stressed than the California basin it talks about. I hate how American Exceptionalism always creeps its way into everything regardless how benign the topic seems. It's like she's trying to say "hey, we've got it bad but at least we're not as backwards as those mOsLeM countries".
here's the study for those interested: https://news.uci.edu/2015/06/16/a-third-of-the-worlds-bigges...
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#37The numbers and interest could change significantly if desalinization membranes could target multi-stage high-volume applications. Or using overland solar tunnels: roofed with solar arrays, the bottom of which would be cooled to condense the evaporation from the water.
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Oh most definitely it would, but you run into trade offs with production / productivity. That's at least what most of my local farmer friends argue.
We proactively add some good bacteria to our ponds monthly to reduce waste by products and things as well, so it's possible that they could fix some of the biome issues.
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Thanks. Is there an aggregate number CA somewhere?
"CA" == amount of precipitation remaining in California, in one form or another.
i.e. CA = total - ocean - NV - AZ - OR - evaporation - other
Re: So, how do you refill an aquifer?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
My understanding is it is the other way around, that in equal concentrations water vapor has a much stronger greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide. However for physics reasons the atmosphere does not hold much water vapor. In fact if I understand correctly this is the mechanism for a runaway greenhouse, that is, something like what happened to venus. Warmer temps allow for more water vapor in the atmosphere, due to i…
> However for physics reasons the atmosphere does not hold much water vapor.
The atmosphere is currently ~422 ppm of CO2, and an average of ~5,000 ppm of H2O, with humid tropical areas having up to ~50,000 ppm of H2O.
Water vapour makes up ~half of the greenhouse effect. It's not a 'good' greenhouse gas, it's just that it's very unevenly distributed, with a strong bias towards having a lot of it in the parts of the world that get a lot of sun - the tropics.