More science reporting that doesn’t know its about beavers. Again from our friends at Phys.org.
G
roundwater, a threatened resource requiring sustainable management
According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), groundwater supplies half of the world’s population with fresh water and makes up 43% of the water used in irrigation. Despite its importance, it is calculated that about a third of the world’s greatest aquifers are drying up quickly and that 20% are being overexploited. In Spain, a country where a large number of crops are watered with groundwater, scientific data show that the extraction rate is much higher than the water replenishing rate.
Okay, I get that groundwater is important for watering crops and stuff, but I don’t understand what that actually has to do with beavers?
“The Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation took several exceptional measures in order to regulate the situation, but it was done by negotiating with the irrigation communities using the traditional ditches, as well as with the new water users who use well water to make it possible to accept the new rules,” explains researcher Mar Delgado. The number of hectares permitted to irrigate was determined, wells were monitored, flow meters were installed, and the amount of water that could be taken for each authorized plot of land was limited.
“The weight of the beaver pond presses water deep into the pond. Recharging aquifers for use by downstream farmers and ranchers”
100 ponds do this 100 times. 1,000.000 ponds do this even better. Or I guess you could just bring in the feds and control painfully who gets water and who doesn’t.
Once it was determined which plots of land had the right to irrigate, most of the farmers with this right opted to rent their land to two major producers, specializing in marketing broccoli on the international market. “The production of added value crops partly covered the higher cost of water use but at the same time these producers could rely on yearly water provisions and the possibility of guaranteeing that their crops used water sustainably, an increasing concern for European consumers,” explains the lead author of the study.
Sure, I guess. That works too. Broccoli?
