By Tiffany Dazet | labroots
Did you know that 100 million Americans depend on groundwater wells?
Wells remain throughout the country for household, agricultural and industrial use. To circumvent the issue of groundwater depletion, some are digging wells deeper and deeper. According to scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, this practice is unsustainable and should not be considered an effective solution to the problem.
Debra Perrone and Scott Jasechko from UCSB’s Department of Environmental Studies conducted the first-ever study of groundwater wells across the contiguous United States. The results of their analysis were published this week in Nature Sustainability. The goal of their research was to locate all wells across the United States and classify them as domestic, industrial, or agricultural. They also aimed to track well depth and determine any changes in depth over time.
