
Aquifer systems extending far offshore on the U.S. Atlantic margin - bookofjoe
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44611-7
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hindsightbias
> Our data suggest a continuous submarine aquifer system spans at least 350 km
> of the U.S. Atlantic coast and contains about 2800 km3 of low-salinity
> groundwater.

That’s a lot of water.

~~~
rayiner
Not really. The Ogallala aquifer is bigger than that (3,600 km^3), and we've
already drawn it down 312 km^3 since 1950.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
We've only used up a tenth of the Ogallala aquifer in 70 years? That's _far_
better than I thought. (Still not good...)

~~~
lostapathy
It's worse, effectively, than the raw numbers, though. It's not like the
aquifer is a swimming pool that you can pump out entirely from a single low
point.

It's water in a porous rock formation. The more we deplete it, the deeper we
have to drill wells and the less water comes out of any given well before it
goes dry. And it's not like we can recover anywhere near 100% of the water for
any amount of effort.

~~~
tomjakubowski
This report cites the same 3.6E3 km^3 figure (2.91 billion acre-feet) as the
amount of "recoverable water" in the aquifer. Do you know if that accounts for
the effects you described?

[https://ne.water.usgs.gov/projects/HPA/index.html](https://ne.water.usgs.gov/projects/HPA/index.html)

edit: from the report

 _Recoverable water in storage is the fraction of water in the aquifer that
will drain by gravity and can be withdrawn by wells. The remaining water in
the aquifer is held to the aquifer material and generally cannot be withdrawn
by wells (Meinzer, 1923)._

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mc32
It’d be interesting to find out if similar systems exist off shore from
Australia, South Africa and India among others where they could exploit this
to complement desal plants for household consumption in regions where there is
little groundwater but are near the coast.

~~~
radicalbyte
In Africa it could maybe be used to reverse desertification in the Sahara.
There have already been ideas touted using desalination plants which are
within the bounds of reality. If you can just pump the water then the project
begins to look like something not just realistic but also worth while
attempting.

~~~
Gpetrium
The cost of desalination (thermal & reverse osmosis) remains quite prohibitive
for most nations due to its high capital and operating cost [1]. Unless the
world finds a scientific rationale for doing something of that magnitude (E.g.
Pour water in the Sahara to slow down world temperature from rising) or a
major resource discovery, it would seem counter-intuitive to desertify it on
behalf of 2.5m people [2]. That is not even accounting the unintended
consequence such as the Saharan desert feeding the Amazon [3], a place
considered the lung of the earth. It would likely be more manageable to have
that population become climate refugees.

[1] [https://www.advisian.com/en-us/global-perspectives/the-
cost-...](https://www.advisian.com/en-us/global-perspectives/the-cost-of-
desalination) [2] [https://www.britannica.com/place/Sahara-desert-
Africa/People](https://www.britannica.com/place/Sahara-desert-Africa/People)
[3] [https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-
reveals-...](https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-
much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants)

~~~
kian
These "lungs of the Earth" consume almost the entirety of the oxygen they
produce directly. The oxygen that they do produce, indirectly, that we are
able to consume comes from 'run-off' from the forest floor producing plankton
blooms, which produce oxygen and sequester carbon as they fall to the ocean
floor. What this would instead do is stop redistributing resources from a
water-starved but resource-rich Africa to a water-rich but relatively
resource-starved South America. Whether that's a good thing or not seems more
like something to leave them to figure out amongst themselves, but I imagine
it will be hard for hundreds of millions of Africans to turn down if it was
possible to cheaply bring water there.

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nategri
Once in a lifetime discovery.

