World’s Largest Lake Drying Up

Lake Superior, the greatest Great Lake and the world’s largest freshwater reservoir, is at its lowest point in 81 years. Other Great Lakes are down too, but none as dramatically as Superior.

The average temperature of the lake has gone up 4.5 degrees since 1979. Warmer water evaporates faster, holds less ice in the winter. Add to that drought and warmer air temperatures — which contribute to evaporation — and you have a recipe for declining water level.

The low lake, besides causing sometimes dramatic views of the shoreline for locals, has some real effects. Both cargo and recreational boat traffic is restricted, hydroelectric power plants have reduced output, and the ecology of the lake’s near shore environment is altered to the detriment of some wild species.

Large lake in southern Chile suddenly vanishes

Jun 21, 2007

Africa's great lakes are drying up

Africa has more than 30,000 cubic kilometres of water in its 677 lakes, more than anywhere else in the world. Vast numbers of people depend for their livelihoods on African lakes but there has been an alarming drop in the water levels of some of the most famous such as Lake Victoria. Neil Ford examines the causes of this new water crisis.(electric supply management)

From:

African Business

Date:

May 1, 2006

Author:

Ford, Neil

As African Business reported last month, water levels on Lake Victoria have fallen alarmingly, resulting in both lower electricity production and power rationing in Uganda. Explanations for the fall have largely focused on the use of water by the power sector but while this may play a role, there is a great deal of evidence pointing towards a long-term problem.

Water levels are falling on many lakes across the region and apart from the obvious devastating environmental impact, East African economies could also be affected by electricity shortages and unusable port facilities.

China Drying Up of Major River Headwaters

Yingling Liu – October 19, 2005 – 4:13pm

As temperatures and human pressures have increased in China’s mountainous west over the past decade, the headwaters of two major river arteries, the Yellow and the Yangtze, are drying up at an alarming rate. The Chinese government has poured in money and other resources in an attempt to reverse or mitigate this trend, but observers remain pessimistic about finding a long-term cure.

According to Xinhua News Agency, residents of Qumalai County, at the headwaters of the Yangtze River, now face the predicament of buying water for survival. All but 8 of the county’s 136 wells had dried up by 2000, leaving 80 percent of the population at the mercy of water peddlers. Eighteen local rivers, once tributaries of the Yangtze, are now identifiable only by their dried-up riverbeds.

The Yellow River faces an even more severe water shortage at its source. A recent study commissioned by the environmental group Greenpeace reports that in the past decade, no-flow events occurred more frequently and lasted much longer than in previous years. About 3,000 of 4,077 lakes in Maduo County, the first county through which the Yellow flows, have disappeared completely, depriving nearly 600 households, 3,000 people, and 119,000 cattle of easy access to water.

Both the Yangtze and Yellow rivers originate on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in western China, in a region known as Sanjiangyuan. Sanjiangyuan, which translates as “sources of three rivers,” covers 363,000 square kilometers and also harbors the headwaters of the Mekong River, which runs through Southeast Asia. Approximately one quarter of the water in the Yangtze River and half of that in the Yellow River comes from this source region; the rest is added from rainfall and tributaries downstream.

In recent years, Sanjiangyuan has witnessed unusual warming, a trend scientists suspect may be linked to global climate change. According to Greenpeace, the average temperature in the region has increased by 0.88 degrees Celsius in the past 50 years. This warming has caused glacial retreat and permafrost melting as well as drainage and degradation of numerous lakes and wetlands that feed the region’s rivers. It has also affected precipitation patterns and boosted evaporation rates, resulting in reduced flows and the disappearance of more sections of the headwaters.

The situation has been exacerbated by intensified human activities, which have stressed the already fragile landscape. The local population has more than quadrupled from 130,000 in 1949 to 610,000 in 2003. With livestock husbandry the major source of income, grasslands are supporting far more animals than they can sustain, at an overgrazing rate of over 56 percent. Insatiable resource demand and the need to feed a fast-growing population have resulted in massive grassland degradation and devastation of the ecosystem’s water-trapping capabilities. Local vegetation is further jeopardized by rampant gold mining and the intensive harvesting of rare Chinese herbs.

The direness of the situation prodded the Chinese government to set up a nature reserve in Sanjiangyuan in May 2000. Officials pledged earlier this year to inject approximately 7.5 billion RMB (US $904 million) into the reserve’s construction from 2004 through 2010, making it China’s largest environmental project ever, China News Agency reported. The money will be spent on relocating residents, conserving grasslands, and increasing precipitation through artificial rains, among other restoration measures.

Most of these government efforts are targeting local human impacts, which could be curbed effectively in the short or mid term with sufficient investment and determination. In the long run, however, hope for sound restoration of the fragile ecosystem at the headwaters of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers is minimal unless regional warming, too, can be successfully addressed. To achieve this goal, however, the resolve of one country alone may not be enough.

Heat Wave is Drying Up Europe's Water Resources

Europe's water resources. Many lakes and rivers are at record lows, aggravating problems already caused by bad water management.

The heat wave that has gripped Europe this summer has been breaking records across the continent. In Germany, dramatically high temperatures made this July the second hottest since 1901. A 1911 record for the highest July temperature in Britain was broken when a village in Surrey hit 36.5 degrees Celsius (97.7 degrees Fahrenheit). And the Dutch meteorological institute said this July was the hottest month in the Netherlands since temperatures were first measured in 1706.

Even though it has cooled down somewhat in the past few days, last month was still three-and-a-half degrees warmer than average, said Gerhard Müller-Westermaier, an expert in climate monitoring at Germany's National Meteorology Service. He said that the heat wave is part of global warming.

"It fits the picture and it will continue to get warmer," Müller-Westermaier said. "We have had a warming of about 0.8 degrees since the beginning of the 20th century and the forecast says that in the next 100 years, we may have temperatures 1.5 to 5.5 degrees warmer. A summer like this one will become a normal summer."

Drought hit agricultural sector hard

Heat is killing fish

The extreme warm weather has caused many of Germany's rivers and lakes to turn into stagnant pools, with very little oxygen in the water. Algae and other pollutants make this situation even worse.

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Dead fish in the completely dry Schwarze Elster riverbed in Brandenburg

Hundreds of dead fish have already been found in canals and lakes in Berlin, and thousands of eels have died in wetlands along the Rhine river near Düsseldorf. The situation has become critical for the Neckar river, one of the Rhine's major tributaries in southern Germany. The water temperature has risen to nearly 28 degrees here, and the oxygen levels are seriously low.

"We have to watch the river extremely carefully," said Uwe Matthias from Baden Württemberg's Environment, Measurement and Conservation Office. "We have numerous recording stations which measure temperature, oxygen levels and conduction, and we are checking these levels practically every hour."

But if it does reach a critical stage, there are methods to get oxygen back into rivers, he said.

"You can let more water tumble over the dams, for example, which oxygenates the water throughout the churning action," Matthias said. "Also, some sewage plants have facilities to agitate or aerate water which flows back into rivers, which increases the oxygen levels."

Of course, healthier waterways aren't just better for fish and other marine life. Humans benefit as well. There's nothing quite like taking a plunge into a clear cool lake on a hot summer's day.

African river basins are drying up says NASA
Meanwhile, Colorado, Mississippi basins are storing more water
mongabay.com
December 12, 2006


New satellite data from NASA show that the Mississippi and Colorado River basins are storing more water over the past five years, while the Congo, Zambezi and Nile basins are drying. While the findings are good news for U.S. agriculture, the research indicates that Africa continues to face geographic hardship

The world's supply of fresh water is running out. Already one person in five has no access to safe drinking water. Click on the map to read about some of the world's water flashpoints.

Yemen is a rocky barren country, with very little arable land, and a population of 20 million people. Groundwater was developed in the last few decades to provide water for urban areas, and for limited agriculture. The water table is now falling at 2 meters each year in the agricultural areas. The capital is Sanaa, and its groundwater level has been falling at 6 meters each year. This presents a very serious problem as there are no other supplies of groundwater, and virtually no supplies of fresh surface water.