Fossil Water and the Role of Large Aquifers in Our Global Ecology

When most of us think of fossils we think of dinosaurs and the dominant paradigm in science of millions of years and geologic time. It is no wonder that the term "fossil water" would bring these time scales to mind. What I am endeavoring to learn and to pass along with this essay is exactly what fossil water is and if it is important to preserve it for the future. I believe that by answering these questions we will be able to understand a little more about fossil water and what our responsibilities in regard to it should be globally.

The first place I went to in my quest for knowledge was to Wikipedia. I have found it to be a great resource when trying to get an overview of a subject and I really like how the bottom of each article has the sources where the information came from making it easy to find more information. After running a search on the phrase "fossil water" a nice little page of information was returned. I say little because it was really little. I expected the usual Wikipedia page with three or four pages of info and a huge list of sites that I could look at to find more info.

This was not the case. Wikipedia only could tell me a couple of things about Fossil Water. The first thing that it told me was that it may be called a couple of other names. There were links to "paleowater" and "artesian wells" in the short article as well as a basic description of fossil water.

According to the article, when dealing with fossil water the source of renewal for the aquifer has been cut off or is at least very slow and is not able to replenish itself in a short amount of time. At some time in the past this aquifer was sealed away underground and very little water has entered or left it since that time. This can be a concern because once we tap these fossil water reserves we may be using up a non-renewable resource since the aquifer is now cut off from the system that filled it originally. In fact, some carbon dating done on water seems to indicate, according to the current time scales associated with carbon 14 dating, that it may be over 40,000 years old (Watkins).

The Ogallala aquifer, in the United States, is not technically fossil water but I am discussing it in this essay because many scientists believe that much of the water in it has been there for thousands of years and had not been disturbed until the early twentieth century. Only now, in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, as we have begun to irrigate and use this water on a massive scale has it become an ecological issue. The aquifer covers from the eastern part of Wyoming to the western part of South Dakota and all the way down half-way through the state of Texas. It has a depth range, of the water contained in it, from 5ft. of water thick, to as much as 525ft. thick. Modern technology has made it viable to pump that water out of the aquifer for agriculture in the early twentieth century and allowed the plains states to become very productive. Scientists understand now that the Ogallala aquifer does replenish itself but it is doing so at a rate much slower than what we taking out of it.

According to a study done by the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District of groundwater levels in the Ogallala aquifer system the level of the aquifer has dropped an average of 1.74 feet per year over the last twenty five years. This results in a loss of 1,082,631 acre feet of water each year (IDRC). With the amount of irrigation we do each year to grow our corn and other crops in the Midwest we are depleting what should be a renewable resource and making it into a non-renewable resource. The aquifer is not able to recharge as fast as we are depleting it and this causes a multitude of new problems such as lower quality water, less surface water flowing in watershed systems, and even destruction of the aquifer system due to compaction of the water-free soils. Once parts of the aquifer are depleted completely they will sometimes compact, the ground will sink, and that part of the aquifer is no longer permeable by the system and is useless. What was once a renewable water resource is now just dry sand and gravel.

Another aquifer that is believed to be a true fossil water deposit is the Nubian aquifer in Egypt and other countries in northern Africa. Egypt is mostly desert with almost all of its population living along the ten percent of the country that is the Nile river delta. This is due to a lack of water in the rest of the country within the Sahara Desert. The Nubian aquifer, which spans across parts of Egypt, Chad, Libya, and the Sudan, is believed to contain more than 150,000 cubic kilometers of water (Wikipedia). This could provide many people in those countries with abundant water supplies for irrigation and drinking water making the Sahara inhabitable and creating many new areas for the people in over-populated cities to expand into.

In Libya there is a project underway to tap this great fossil water reserve. The Great Manmade River Project that they began in 1984 is continuing to grow right now and the country has big plans for this extra water. Since the country is mostly desert there is no water for agriculture and farming and many cities have even run out of potable water as the local aquifers have become depleted. The project has tapped the Nubian aquifer in many places and is transferring that water all over the country.

They get the water from underground in the desert aquifer and to pipe it to where the majority of the population resides on the coastline to supplement the loss of the coastal aquifers. They have already accomplished getting water to the coastal cities and are now expanding the water flow to include agriculture and are using the Nubian fossil water to do it. According to a BBC news article, by John Watkins on March 18^th, 2006, Libya is able to transport over 6.5 million cubic meters of water a day form over one thousand wells across the country to wherever water is needed.

Of course there are many concerns to be addressed as both countries begin to tap these reserves. Since the water is true fossil water then it is finite. It would not be a good idea to just open up the water completely to anybody who can dig a well. The water needs to be managed and analyzed so that it is not abused and used up unnecessarily. Are Libya and Egypt prepared to do this? It doesn't seem so at this time. Libya now has a new standing in the world. By combining its oil reserves and its new agricultural abilities it not only can take care of itself but is moving into completely new markets such as grapes and other crops that they will be able to trade on the world market. This new found freedom and security is not going to be given up at any cost. They will probably continue to pump as much water as they can just like we are doing in the Midwestern United States. It won't be until the fossil water reserves are becoming depleted that they will begin to look into conservation. Fortunately for them, it looks as though the Nubian aquifer is vast and will continue to provide northern African countries with abundant water for decades to come but that does not mean that a cautious approach to consumption policies is not necessary.

Works Consulted

Chapelle, Francis H. The Hidden Sea. Tucson, Arizona: Geoscience Press, 1997.

Cowen, Richard. Chapter 18: Mining Water. University of California, Davis California. December 10,

2006. http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~GEL115/115CH18miningwater.html>

Hudak, Paul F. Principles of Hydrogeology, Second Edition. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press LLC, 2000.

International Development Research Center or IDRC. "Chapter 5. Water quality : The ecological crisis".

Watershed. November 9^th, 2004. December 10, 2006.

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-29778-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html>

North Plains Groundwater Conservation District. Ogallala Aquifer. December 10^th, 2006. http://www.npwd.org/Ogallala.htm>

Watkins, John. Libya's thirst for 'fossil water'. March 18^th, 2006. BBC News. December 10, 2006.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4814988.stm>

Wikipedia. Artesian Aquifer. November 20th, 2006. December 10, 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artesian_wells>

---. Fossil Water. September 23^rd,2006. December 10, 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_water

---. Great Manmade River. November 1^st, 2006. December 10, 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Manmade_River>

---. Hydrogeology. November 15^th, 2006. December 10^th, 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogeology

---. Libya. December 9^th, 2006. December 10, 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya>

---. Ogallala Aquifer. December 6^th, 2006. December 10, 2006.