How to Rescue a Sinking Water Table

drying aquifers are threatening the very survival of human civilization I hear about this everywhere I travel all over the world in cities and in farmlands Wells are drying up as water tables drop from overuse and changing rainfall patterns but we know how to fix this so in this video I'm going to lay out the basics of how to regenerate a drying aquifer so you can get started before we talk about fixing the aquifer we need to cover some basic geology and hydrology to understand the situation beneath the ground you need to realize that geology is extremely variable and there are a lot of anomalies out there but in general there are three main types of aquifers and the first one is called a perched aquifer a perched aquifer is caused by a layer of impermeable rock strata that's set higher up in the landscape than any other larger water table the air area above the perch is where the water comes from that feeds this aquifer and a lot of times that water will surface on the ground in the form of a spring did you ever see a spring popping out in the middle of a hill probably from a perched aquifer the next type of aquifer is called an unconfined aquifer an unconfined aquifer is created by all of the water in a watershed that seeps into the ground and settles in the low areas an unconfined aquifers recharged by rain and snow and basically follows the Topography of the land so at the bottoms of valleys are where we usually find the unconfined aquifer close to the surface an unconfined aquifer is connected to streams and rivers and wetlands in The Valleys the rivers are the part of the aquifer that shows itself above the ground this is how over pumping of the unconfined aquifer can dry up rivers and streams the third type of aquifer is called a confined aquifer confined aquifers have impermeable Rock layers both above and below so they're not recharged by the rain falling above them if they're recharged at all it's by lamb that's probably far away and not related to the surface topography see the water in confined aquifers was deposited there a long time ago and may have just been sitting inside the confinement of rock layers for hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of years water that's been confined for a long time like this is called fossil water I made a whole video about the largest area of fossil water on the planet in North Africa where some of the same water has been sitting right there in the ground for a million years these Pockets can be pressurized and when a pressurized pocket is drilled into the water just erupts out of the well without a pump these are called artesian wells one of the main differences between the perched and unconfined aquifers with the confined aquifer is that the perch and the unconfined aqua offers are renewable meaning that the water from the Watershed soaks in and recharges that aquifer but a confined aquifer is non-renewable now it may possibly be recharged by an area far away but it's not recharged by the land above it so if you're pulling your water from a confined aquifer this video is not going to help you very much where I lived in Prescott Arizona the entire water supply was pumped in from a confined aquifer filled with fossil water that had been deposited there during the pleistocene era when it was a much wetter place as the town grew and the water level dropped without any recharge their solution was to build a pipeline to take water from an even farther away confined aquifer of ancient water you can guess how that one's going to play out in the long term so as far as groundwater recharge we're going to focus on the perched and the unconfined aquifers for these aquifers work can be done within the catchment Basin which is the land above these aquifers to rebuild these water tables in a degraded landscape with bare naked soil water falls on Hills and Valleys and quickly rushes through the drainage system without soaking in to feed the groundwater Supply if water in this Watershed is not percolating into the ground then when water is sucked out of the aquifer by Wells it's not being replenished in a massive restoration project on the Los plateau in China they described how to dress that bare naked soil by putting on clothes first this means putting a hat on the tops of Hills by planting trees when hilltops are wearing a hat and covered with trees there are a lot of positive effects for the hydrology as the forest canopy breaks the force of falling raindrops and creates a spongy Shady soil environment for increased percolation of water I have an entire video on why hilltops should grow trees so please watch how trees make water for a perched aquifer the hilltop May comprise the entire catchment so the effects of foresting the hilltop can mean a dramatic increase in water flowing from Springs connected to that aquifer the next item of clothing to dress the bare soil is a belt this is the treatment for mid-slopes some sort of structures or cultivation patterns that are placed perpendicular to the flow of water will create checks to slow and sink the flow as the water moves down slope these can be Terraces rows of trees and shrubs swales the tillage pattern perennial grasses or any sort of treatment to the slope which spreads the water across the hill instead of flowing down this interception will slow spread and sink water for increasing percolation by increasing the time and surface area contact between land and water the longer the water lingers and the more ground it's spread over the more time and space it has to soak in small ponds or Terraces within the drainages can further sink in excess runoff and then the waterways should be vegetated as much as possible so plant roots grow deep to Aid with percolation and shade the waterways to keep the soil spongy the final item of clothing to include are the shoes the shoes are ponds placed at the bottoms of slopes to collect any excess runoff that makes its way past a hat and belt the ponds can allow for further percolation and also can be sealed and used as irrigation water for Downstream Farmland so do you see what we did we slowed the flow of water throughout the total Watershed by dressing the terrain so water will percolate into the ground and recharge the aquifer instead of rushing off Downstream over bare naked ground recharging a depleted aquifer is as simple as changing the duration of time that it takes for water to move from the top to the bottom of the Watershed and giving it opportunities to percolate instead of running off in order to successfully recharge an aquifer you need to control as much of the Watershed as possible because the more widespread your treatment is over the total Watershed the more the cumulative effects that your work will have on the aquifer now I've been showing sloped land but the same Theory goes for flatter areas as well as urban areas making places for water to soak in and percolate throughout the entire catchment that feeds the aquifer that may mean small basins collecting Road runoff or dry Wells to get water into the ground in very dense urban areas it's about intercepting water as close to where it falls as is possible and getting it down into the ground it's really pretty basic because most aquifer depletion is a result of land degradation and urbanization there's also the problem of over extraction where people are growing thirsty crops and building thirsty cities and pumping down the aquifer faster than it will have ever been capable of recharging the solutions for that are based more in water conservation growing appropriate crops and regulating to prevent over extraction the scale and complexity of some of these situations may seem large and overwhelming but with large-scale aquifer depletion we just need larger scale Watershed restoration what are we waiting for

Channel: Andrew Millison

Views: 150,248

Keywords: climate change, climate crisis, ecosystem restoration, permaculture, andrew millison, agroforestry, ecological restoration, soil, soil regeneration, soil improvement techniques, regreening the planet, regreening the desert with john d. liu, regreening desert, permaculture design, permaculture principles, oregon state university, reforestation, biotic pump, plant trees, watershed, aquifer recharge, loess plateau, groundwater recharge, Water table recharge

Id: 7fFXJ3G49pY

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Cammy014]

Andrew Millison is fantastic! His videos are high quality and educational and always reinforce how important water is in the system. He also transformed his 1/3 acre suburban lot into a permaculture garden with chickens and bees. He doesn’t just talk the talk this man.

[u/PaleDiscipline3588]

All of the above will be done when oil becomes cheaper than water.