WaterWired

New Mexico Groundwater: Moving Right Ahead with The Water Data Act

On 16 November 2017 I posted about a nifty program in New Mexico: the Collaborative Groundwater Monitoring Network (CGMN) of the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (NMBGMR) Aquifer Mapping Program (AMP). He post included the glowing comments of one stakeholder.

I now have some information about a another groundwater program of the Bureau.  Hydrogeologist Stacy Timmons (OSU Geology MS, 2002), the AMP manager, told me of some 'cool legislation' - the Water Data Act - they are working on.

This bill was modeled similar to Californa's Open and Transparent Water Data Act of 2016, but catered to New Mexico. Some of the major points of this legislation are that it:

• Seeks to coordinate and integrate all relevant water data for the state.
• Establishes a multi-agency council to develop common water data standards and improve data openness, accessibility, and interoperability--co-chaired by the Bureau of Geology (as the state agency charged with maintaining data) and ISC (the primary body charged with state water planning). 
• All major resource management agencies and academic institutions would participate in the Council, along with an advisory group of stakeholders that could include federal, tribal, irrigation district and acequias, NGOs etc. 
• Establishes a fund to accept state and outside monies to support improvements to water data statewide.  

Here is a PDF of the bill:

Download NM_HB0651+2019

Stacy concluded her email:

I believe it would make New Mexico the 2nd state in the country to move water data into the wide open, and require it to be interoperable! As a desert state facing warmer times, we could actually be proactive on water issues!

She promised to send me more information - fact sheets and the like - if I wanted them. I will post them when I receive them.

This is really something - a model for other states. Once again, New Mexico fools everyone with its foresight when it comes to groundwater.

Enjoy!

"Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river." - Mark Twain

Paper: 'Global Patterns and Dynamics of Climate–Groundwater Interactions'

Groundwater and climate! Good to see the conflation of these two items. Global Patterns and Dynamics of Climate–Groundwater Interactions by M. O. Cuthbert, T. Gleeson, N. Moosdorf, M. Befus, A. Schneider, J. Hartmann and B. Lehner 2019. Nature Climate Change 9: 137-141.  

Download Global Patterns_Dynamics Climate_GW

Abstract
Groundwater, the largest available store of global freshwater, is relied upon by more than two billion people. It is therefore important to quantify the spatiotemporal interactions between groundwater and climate. However, current understanding of the global-scale sensitivity of groundwater systems to climate change — as well as the resulting variation in feedbacks from groundwater to the climate system — is limited. Here, using groundwater model results in combination with hydrologic data sets, we examine the dynamic timescales of groundwater system responses to climate change. We show that nearly half of global groundwater fluxes could equilibrate with recharge variations due to climate change on human (~100 year) timescales, and that areas where water tables are most sensitive to changes in recharge are also those that have the longest groundwater response times. In particular, groundwater fluxes in arid regions are shown to be less responsive to climate variability than in humid regions. Adaptation strategies must therefore account for the hydraulic memory of groundwater systems, which can buffer climate change impacts on water resources in many regions, but may also lead to a long, but initially hidden, legacy of anthropogenic and climatic impacts on river flows and groundwater-dependent ecosystems.

Global 'water table ratio' and 'groundwater response time' raster data - click here

Great job! I don't know the authors except for Tom Gleeson, and he's top shelf (no, not the Aussie comedian or the Irish rugby player).

Enjoy!

"When shifting paradigms it is important to put in the clutch." - Unknown

Read This Paper: 'Competition for Shrinking Window of Low Salinity Groundwater'

Competition for Shrinking Window of Low Salinity Groundwater 

Very good 'big data' groundwater article by Grant Ferguson, Jennifer C. McIntosh, Debra Perrone and Scott Jasechko.

There is even a 4-minute video abstract from senior author Grant Ferguson!

Download Ferguson_2018_Environ._Res._Lett._13_114013

Abstract
Groundwater resources are being stressed from the top down and bottom up. Declining water tables and near-surface contamination are driving groundwater users to construct deeper wells in many US aquifer systems. This has been a successful short-term mitigation measure where deep groundwater is fresh and free of contaminants. Nevertheless, vertical salinity profiles are not well-constrained at continental-scales. In many regions, oil and gas activities use pore spaces for energy production and waste disposal. Here we quantify depths that aquifer systems transition from fresh-to-brackish and where oil and gas activities are widespread in sedimentary basins across the United States. Fresh-brackish transitions occur at relatively shallow depths of just a few hundred meters, particularly in eastern US basins. We conclude that fresh groundwater is less abundant in several key US basins than previously thought; therefore drilling deeper wells to access fresh groundwater resources is not feasible extensively across the continent. Our findings illustrate that groundwater stores are being depleted not only by excessive withdrawals, but due to injection, and potentially contamination, from the oil and gas industry in areas of deep fresh and brackish groundwater.

My Ten Cents
I would point out that sedimentary basins are often significant oil and gas reservoirs, as are many of the 28 delineated in this paper. Subsurface data are frequently far more prevalent in these areas for obvious reasons. In the paper you don't find  discussion of regions/aquifers such as the Dakota Sandstone aquifer, deep carbonate aquifer system(s) in Nevada and parts of Utah, Floridan aquifer in the southeast US, northern High Plains aquifer, Columbia River Basalt aquifer system and Snake River Plain aquifer in the Pacific Northwest. These (and other aquifers) are large bodies of fresh groundwater that are excluded from consideration in this paper. So only those aquifers in sedimentary basins with significant hydrocarbon development are considered in this paper. 

As Grant Ferguson says in the video abstract, drilling deeper for fresh groundwater is still a viable option in places like the Central Valley of California and the alluvial basins of Arizona (and presumably Nevada and Utah).

The discussion says (emboldening mine):

"Our continental-scale findings suggest that the amount of fresh groundwater that is available globally may be less than thought previously. Gleeson et al [28] estimated that only 6% of water in the upper 2 km of the crust is young (i.e. less than 50 years old), and the rest is old water." 

The authors have looked only at the USA and it's an incomplete sample at that. So the words 'suggest' should be emphasized and 'globally' deleted. The authors' comments are thus not necessarily indicative of groundwater conditions throughout the entire USA but only in those with significant oil and gas operations. 

 

Also - Gleeson et al. said that only 6% of the water in the upper 2 km of the crust is younger than 50 years old (the amount of time  since that water was recharged). So what? What's wrong with GW that is older? I can pick an age of 30 years and call that the boundary between young and old and you'll wind up with less than 6%. And consider that 2 km of Earth's crust probably holds a tremendous amount of freshwater.  I don't recall that Gleeson et al. did a potential volume calculation but just gave a percentage.

I know all the authors except the second author and am especially familiar with Drs. Perrone and Jasechko, two rising stars on the groundwater stage. They are friends. 

That said, I am enthused about this exciting work and its potential. It does require a lot of data; even our friends in Canada do not have the data to support an anaysis of this sort. The 'bottom up' approach is novel and will find greater use as time goes by.

Enjoy!


“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” - T.S. Eliot

UNU-INWEH Report: 'Groundwater and Sustainable Development Goals - Analysis of Interlinkages'

The Groundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice (GRIPP) just sent me notification of a seminal report that examines the interlinkages between groundwater and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is an important report because discussions of the SDGs rarely invoke groundwater - a bizarre circumstance since groundwater is so much of Earth's liquid freshwater. Go figure....

Kudos go to GRIPP partners UNU-INWEH (United Nations University Institute for Water, Enviroment and Health), CGIAR-WLE (CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems) and CGIAR-IWMI (CGIAR International Water Management Institute). Authors are Lisa Guppy, Paula Uyttendaele, Karen G. Villholth and Vladimir Smakhtin. 

Download Groundwater_SDGs_Analysis_of_Interlinkages

Executive Summary

Groundwater represents 97% of the world’s available freshwater resources and is extensively abstracted throughout the world. While abundant in a global context, it can only de developed to a certain extent without causing environmental impacts. Also, it is highly variable across the globe, and where it is heavily relied on, it is less renewable. Hence, it is critically important that this resource is managed sustainably. However, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Development Agenda do not, as a rule, account explicitly for the signi cant role that groundwater plays and will continue to play in sustainable development. This report aims to unpack and highlight this role through consistent analysis of the interlinkages between groundwater and the targets of the SDGs.

The key features of groundwater relevant to the SDGs are its use, management and sustainability. The methodology used to analyse groundwater interlinkages with SDG targets includes, rst, identi cation of ‘evidence-based’ and ‘logical’ interlinkages. The rst type of interlinkages is supported by existing data, while the second is by information and logic that needs to be drawn from existing bodies of relevant research. While only a few interlinkages may be seen at present as “evidence-based”, more data are continuously emerging to make more interlinkages supported by hard-core evidence.

Subsequently, the interlinkages are classi ed into either ‘reinforcing’, ‘con icting’ or ‘mixed’ - depending on whether achievement of a target will have predominantly positive, negative, or mixed impact on groundwater. The interlinkages are also classi ed into ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’, depending on how strong and direct the impacts on groundwater from achieving the targets may be. The report presents a summary of key interlinkages, and subsequently provides the narrative of all ‘primary’ ones.

The analysis suggests that more than half of interlinkages are ‘reinforcing’, while only a few are ‘con icting’. From a policy perspective i) conflicting interlinkages are the most critical and dif cult ones to manage, and ii) it is important to draw synergies between SDG initiatives and groundwater to allow reinforcing interlinkages to materialise. Nearly a third of all identi ed interlinkages were classi ed as ‘mixed’. This means that when target activities are planned, careful consideration must be given to possible impacts on groundwater to avoid unintended negative outcomes that may not be evident at rst. Primary interlinkages that constitute 43% of all may be the easiest to understand and the most important to plan for. However, there are even more secondary interlinkages. This means that groundwater experts need to be able to share knowledge to a range of actors involved in addressing the targets with secondary interlinkages to groundwater, and vice versa.

It is also shown that i) the importance of groundwater to sustainable development is poorly recognised and captured at the SDG target level; ii) there is a lack of globally useful, up-to-date and SDG-relevant groundwater data available, which makes it dif cult to make globally, and even locally, relevant recommendations for groundwater use, management and sustainability in the SDG era, and iii) there are often poor links between targets and their indicators. This may signal that all groundwater-related and groundwater-relevant aspirations may not be translated into real, let alone, measurable action.

This report is not a comprehensive analysis and involves an element of subjectivity, associated primarily with the data and information paucity on one hand, and with the imperfection of the SDG target and indicator system itself – on another. However, even with these limitations, the report shows how signi cant groundwater is in sustainable development, even if the current SDG framework is implicit about this. Furthermore, it suggests a structured way to improve the visibility of groundwater in the SDG framework as it continues to develop.

Enjoy!

“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” – Abba Eban

Transboundary Aquifer Collection Just Published: 'Special Issue on International Shared Aquifer Resources Assessment and Management'

I just received this email from Alfonso Rivera and Lucila Candela.

Dear contributors, dear colleagues,

It is with great pleasure that we announce the long-awaited publication of the Special Issue on International Shared Aquifer Resources Assessment and Management, officially published today by the Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies.

You may access, read and/or download the full volume here:

Special Issue on International Shared Aquifer Resources Assessment and Management

We are very grateful for your contributions and patience, it took long but it was worth it!

We asked the journal for printed volumes and will let you know later if we can distribute one to everyone on this list.

Please forward this message to co-authors we may have forgotten on this Email, as well as globally to your networks around the world.

With our best regards,

Alfonso and Lucila

This is an exceptional volume. 

There are 12 articles. I have reprinted the abstract of the editorial by Alfonso and Lucila, after which I have listed the titles of the others. You should be able to freely access them by clicking on the title.

Editorial

Editorial for the Special Issue on the International Shared Aquifer Resources Assessment and Management

Abstract

Transboundary water systems, which include interlinked river basins, lakes and aquifers, do not respect jurisdictional boundaries and many of them extend over more than one country. Management of these aquifers in fragmented ways may affect sustainable development within and beyond a country’s borders and this requires an integrated water resource management approach. The importance of transboundary water was initially recognized under the ‘Convention on the protection and use of transboundary watercourses and international lakes (Helsinki, 1992)’, a legal framework for transboundary water cooperation worldwide, globally available since 2003. The global assessment of Transboundary Water Assessment Programme (TWAP) was developed by the UNESCO’s International Hydrology Program, and a conceptual framework for transboundary aquifers (TBA) assessment was developed by UNESCO-IHP and the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) in 2002 describing the major issues of concern and the priorities for supporting the conservation of TBA systems. As a result, the International Shared Aquifer Resources Management (ISARM) initiative was launched globally in 2002. Here we summarize key findings from 11 papers, most of which were selected by invitation to prepare this special issue on the International Shared Aquifer Resources Assessment and Management from four continents: Africa, America, Asia and Europe.

Global

Fifteen-year experiences of the internationally shared aquifer resources management initiative (ISARM) of UNESCO at the global scale

Legal frameworks for the governance of international transboundary aquifers: Pre- and post-ISARM experience

Africa

Transboundary aquifers of Africa: Review of the current state of knowledge and progress towards sustainable development and management

A national approach to systematic transboundary aquifer assessment and conceptualisation at relevant scales: A Malawi case study

Americas

The Guarani Aquifer System: From a Beacon of hope to a question mark in the governance of transboundary aquifers

Findings and lessons learned from the assessment of the Mexico-United States transboundary San Pedro and Santa Cruz aquifers: The utility of social science in applied hydrologic research

Transboundary aquifers between Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, Mexico, and Texas, USA: Identification and categorization

Asia

Assessment of transboundary aquifer resources in Asia: Status and progress towards sustainable groundwater management

Europe

The Genevese transboundary aquifer (Switzerland-France): The secret of 40 years of successful management

The upper pannonian thermal aquifer: Cross border cooperation as an essential step to transboundary groundwater management

Development of cooperation on managing transboundary groundwaters in the pan-European region: The role of international frameworks and joint assessments

For some lighter fare, view the May 2018 issue of Water Resources IMPACT edited by John Tracy and me on Transboundary Groundwater. It contains short articles written in a conversational style. Click here.

Enjoy!

"If God created the world, his primary concern was certainly not to make its understanding easy for us." - Albert Einstein (quoted in @aeonmag via @TheWeek)