Environment

Humans Pumping Groundwater at Unsustainable Levels

New studies of the world’s groundwater reveal that human activity is using the precious resource at an unsustainable level despite uncertainty about just how much water remains underground.

About a third of the world’s largest subterranean basins are being depleted without anyone knowing when the water will run out, according to two reports by an international team of scientists published in the journal Water Resources Research.

The studies are the first to estimate groundwater losses by using data from NASA’s twin GRACE satellites.

Instruments aboard the orbiters detect the contours of Earth’s gravity, which can be shaped by the weight of water.

The Arabian Aquifer System, a key source for more than 60 million people in the Middle East, was found to be the most overstressed in the world.

The Indus Basin aquifer of northwestern India and Pakistan came in second while North Africa’s Murzuk-Djado Basin was third.

The team urgently recommends that further research be conducted to determine just how much water is left.

"In a water-scarce society, we can no longer tolerate this level of uncertainty, especially since groundwater is disappearing so rapidly,” said researcher Alexandra Richey.

Saudi Arabia's Anaam Agricultural Project in the northwest of the country pumps out vast amounts of water each year from the Arabian Aquifer System. In this astronaut photo from the International Space Station, each dot is an irrigated field, thousands of feet across.