“The losses are being driven largely by heavy pumping to supply agriculture, he said. At the same time, prolonged drought and rising temperatures have sapped river flows and decreased the amount of water percolating underground and recharging aquifers.”
“Groundwater is a crucial buffer … but it is rapidly disappearing due to excessive extraction."
“The researchers found that most of the depletion of groundwater (about three-fourths of the total) is occurring in the river's lower basin, largely in Arizona, where the bulk of the water is pumped from desert aquifers to irrigate farms.“
“Famiglietti noted that in large portions of the Colorado River Basin, groundwater pumping remains unregulated and unmanaged”
Why choose this phys.org summary? Because it is appropriately focused on the actionable root cause, groundwater mismanagement…really no management, especially in Arizona and agriculture.
The first two words in the Wiley article, on the other hand, is “climate change”. Interesting that the professional-level abstract for the article focuses on complex interactions with no “climate change” branding. The popular-level abstract mentions “climate change” explicitly.
But the population needs to understand what concrete actions taken today are needed to prevent future shortages, and those actions involve reducing groundwater pumping, in particular for agriculture uses. Mentioning climate change in this case is an actual distraction from making the hard political choices regarding groundwater management, which is why I suspect the “real” abstract doesn’t mention it.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/the-colorado-ri...
https://phys.org/news/2025-05-groundwater-rapidly-declining-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44116717
“The losses are being driven largely by heavy pumping to supply agriculture, he said. At the same time, prolonged drought and rising temperatures have sapped river flows and decreased the amount of water percolating underground and recharging aquifers.”
“Groundwater is a crucial buffer … but it is rapidly disappearing due to excessive extraction."
“The researchers found that most of the depletion of groundwater (about three-fourths of the total) is occurring in the river's lower basin, largely in Arizona, where the bulk of the water is pumped from desert aquifers to irrigate farms.“
“Famiglietti noted that in large portions of the Colorado River Basin, groundwater pumping remains unregulated and unmanaged”
Why choose this phys.org summary? Because it is appropriately focused on the actionable root cause, groundwater mismanagement…really no management, especially in Arizona and agriculture.
The first two words in the Wiley article, on the other hand, is “climate change”. Interesting that the professional-level abstract for the article focuses on complex interactions with no “climate change” branding. The popular-level abstract mentions “climate change” explicitly.
But the population needs to understand what concrete actions taken today are needed to prevent future shortages, and those actions involve reducing groundwater pumping, in particular for agriculture uses. Mentioning climate change in this case is an actual distraction from making the hard political choices regarding groundwater management, which is why I suspect the “real” abstract doesn’t mention it.