Three decades of data have informed a new Nebraska-led study that shows how the depletion of groundwater — the same that many farmers rely on for irrigation — can threaten food production amid drought and drier climes.
The study found that, due in part to the challenges of extracting groundwater, an aquifer’s depletion can curb crop yields even when it appears saturated enough to continue meeting the demands of irrigation. Those agricultural losses escalate as an aquifer dwindles, the researchers reported, so that its depletion exerts a greater toll on corn and soybean yields when waning from, say, 100 feet thick to 50 than from 200 feet to 150.
That reality should encourage policymakers, resource managers and growers to reconsider the volume of crop-quenching groundwater they have at their disposal, the team said, especially in the face of fiercer, more frequent drought.
Read more at: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
A center-pivot irrigation system waters a cornfield near Adams, Nebraska, about 45 minutes south of Lincoln. A new Husker-led study shows how the depletion of groundwater — the same that many farmers rely on for irrigation — can threaten food production amid drought and drier climes. Due in part to the challenges of extracting groundwater, an aquifer’s depletion can curb crop yields even when it appears saturated enough to continue meeting the demands of irrigation, the study found. (Photo Credit: Craig Chandler, University of Nebraska–Lincoln)