Human fingerprints are everywhere in the world’s fresh water. A new study Published in the journal on Wednesday, shows that the man-made freshwater resources, a minimal part of the world’s dams, lakes, and rivers, they are responsible for more than half of all changes on earth water system.
The study used new satellite laser technology to take a closer look at freshwater resources around the world and monitor their water levels during different seasons. Using NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite, researchers tracked more than 227,000 bodies of freshwater, ranging from the Great Lakes to small dams. over a period of about one and a half years. Researchers have found that 57% of global volatility in water storage occurs in human-controlled reservoirs.
“This large proportion is even more striking when considering that reservoirs make up only 3.9% of the 227,386 lakes analyzed in this study,” said Sarah Cooley, the lead author of the study, which is currently at the University. from California, Berkeley, but work begins while at Brown, said by email. “Although the water cycle is generally portrayed as a natural process, our finding that humans are responsible for the majority of the volatility in surface water storage for seasons shows that we are now a major regulator of the water cycle.”
Before the launch of this satellite in 2018, what was originally designed to be able to observe ice sheets and collect extraordinarily detailed data, it was actually difficult to get a grip on how freshwater masses moved over time. Cooley said most human-controlled reservoirs have meters to measure water levels, but there is no global database for these measurements. Few lakes and dams that are not reservoirs meanwhile have meters.
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Satellites before ICESat-2 could only monitor a few hundred of the world’s largest lakes, the data collected here is therefore exciting for people who spend their time thinking about freshwater cycles. “This study provides the first global quantification of the surface water level variability and human impact on surface water storage,” Cooley said.
Now that we can see how water cycles behave around the world –and how much impact people have on freshwater reserves – this can tell us a lot about the future and how we can improve management. This is particularly important as the climate crisis intensifies. changes the water cycle.
“People who have strong control over the variation in surface water are not a bad thing by nature,” Cooley said, explaining that a human hand in managing fresh water is essential to sustain our lives on E.water, including the use of hydroelectric dams, irrigation of farms, and, you know, giving us water to drink. But “improving seasonal variability in water storage can certainly have detrimental effects on the environment by increasing evaporation and greenhouse gas emissions, degrading water quality, ecosystems and improving downstream erosion.”
Climit change is already large over the world’s fresh water supply. Important sources of drinking water, such as the Colorado River, has less water and slower flow due to climate change—even though they have an increasing demand from our water-hungry farms and cities. Rainfall itself is becoming more volatile in some places, like california, leading to years with too much water for infrastructure to handle and others where reservoirs run near dry. In December, Wall Street began betting on water as a commodity, as money vultures see water scarcity as a new opportunity to make a profit in decades to come. With these changes – and the risk of exploiting a vital natural resource–to monitor what is really going on with the water supply is going to be even more important.
‘To ensure the sustainability of freshwater resources worldwide, it is valuable, although, to understand where people exercise the most control over surface water storage, as these may be areas that are more vulnerable in the future, ”Cooley said.