Groundwater footprint highlights challenging global water situation

(Phys.org) -- Farmers are unsustainably exploiting groundwater in a number of important agricultural regions, according to a team of researchers led by Prof. Tom Gleeson of McGill’s Department of Civil Engineering, in collaboration with researchers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Indeed, widespread groundwater depletion has recently been reported in aquifers (the underground sand, gravel or rock formations that hold groundwater) around the world. In a recent article published in Nature, the researchers estimate that approximately 1.7 billion people, most of whom reside in Asia, live in areas where groundwater resources and/or groundwater-dependent ecosystems are under threat.

Read the whole article on Physorg

More from Physorg