A new University of Michigan-led study reveals that farmers in India are adapting to rising temperatures by increasing the extraction of groundwater for irrigation. If this trend continues, the rate of groundwater depletion could triple by 2080, posing a greater threat to India’s food and water security.
The reduced availability of water in India, caused by both groundwater depletion and climate change, could jeopardize the livelihoods of over one-third of the country’s 1.4 billion residents and have global consequences. India recently surpassed China as the world’s most populous nation and is the second-largest producer of staple crops like rice and wheat.
“Our findings indicate that farmers are already responding to higher temperatures by intensifying their use of irrigation, a strategy that previous projections of groundwater depletion in India did not account for,” said Meha Jain, assistant professor at U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability and senior author of the study. “This is concerning because India is the largest consumer of groundwater globally and it plays a critical role in the regional and global food supply.”
The lead author of the study is Nishan Bhattarai from the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability at the University of Oklahoma, who was previously a postdoctoral researcher in Jain’s U-M lab.
Published in the journal Science Advances, the study analyzed historical data on groundwater levels, climate, and crop water stress to identify recent changes in withdrawal rates due to warming. The researchers also utilized temperature and precipitation projections from 10 climate models to estimate future rates of groundwater depletion across India.
2023-09-01 23:00:04
Link from phys.org