What is the Ogallala Aquifer Initiative?
The Ogallala Aquifer Initiative offers a combination of technical and financial assistance to landowners and land managers in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas, South Dakota and Wyoming to install a compre- hensive set of conservation practices designed to reduce the quantity of water removed from …
What is special about the Ogallala Aquifer?
The Ogallala Aquifer, whose total water storage is about equal to that of Lake Huron in the Midwest, is the single most important source of water in the High Plains region, providing nearly all the water for residential, industrial, and agricultural use. The cattle feedlots support a large meatpacking industry.
How do you protect the Ogallala Aquifer?
Using less water can help save the Ogallala Aquifer. At the current rate of use, part of the Ogallala could be exhausted within this century and may take 6,000 years to restore. It is important to develop agricultural innovations to area farmers sustain agricultural production in that region.
What caused the Ogallala Aquifer to dry up?
However, well outputs in the central and southern parts of the aquifer are declining due to excessive pumping, and prolonged droughts have parched the area, bringing back Dust Bowl-style storms, according to the NCA4.
What is the biggest aquifer in the world?
Great Artesian Basin
Groundwater aquifers can be truly huge. The world’s largest aquifer is the Great Artesian Basin in Australia. It covers 1.7 million square kilometres, equivalent to about a quarter of the entire country and 7 times the area of the UK. The Great Artesian Basin is also the deepest aquifer in the world.
How deep is the Ogallala Aquifer?
The saturated thickness of the Ogallala aquifer in the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District ranges from 10 to over 460 feet with an estimated District average of 180 feet. The depth from land surface to the base of the aquifer can range from the land surface to as much as 1000 feet below surface.
What happens if the Ogallala aquifer dries up?
If the aquifer goes dry, more than $20 billion worth of food and fiber will vanish from the world’s markets. And scientists say it will take natural processes 6,000 years to refill the reservoir.
What is Earth’s biggest source of fresh water?
groundwater
US and Canadian researchers recently calculated the total amount of the world’s groundwater and estimated that it is equivalent to a lake 180 metres deep covering the entire Earth. This makes groundwater the largest active freshwater resource on the planet.
What is the largest aquifer in the USA?
The Ogallala Aquifer
The Ogallala Aquifer is the largest aquifer in the United States. It is part of the High Plains aquifer system, which underlies parts of eight states from Texas to South Dakota.
What is the largest aquifer in the world?
the Great Artesian Basin
Where is the Ogallala Aquifer in North America?
United States Geological Survey.) The Ogallala Aquifer, also known as the High Plains Aquifer, underlies eight different states, stretching across America’s High Plains from South Dakota down to Northern Texas.
Which is better for aquifer depletion Nebraska or Kansas?
Nebraska has taken a tougher stance than Kansas, and consequently has had more success in combating aquifer depletion. The Nebraska Ground Water Management and Protection Act allows the state government to limit irrigators’ water allocations as well as implement programs such as rotating water permits.
How is the water crisis in the High Plains?
In Western Kansas, for example, water levels have declined by up to sixty percent in some areas as the gap between what is withdrawn for irrigation and what is recharged continues to expand. In northwest Texas, so much water has been pumped and so little recharged that irrigation has largely depleted the aquifer in the area.
Where does the water come from in the High Plains?
Much of the water from the Basin passes through Nebraska before entering Kansas via the Republican River, and Nebraska must limit water consumption to comply with the state’s obligations to Kansas under the Compact.