The High Plains Aquifer is the largest aquifer in the United States and the major source of groundwater withdrawals in the region. Although regionally abundant, groundwater availability for agriculture and other uses is not uniform across the area. Three separate states comprising the most significant portion of the aquifer have distinct climate and hydrologic characteristics, water law systems, and institutional groundwater governance leading to different concerns about water policy issues across the area.
The northern, largest, and most saturated part of the High Plains Aquifer is located under Nebraska. The state has the largest irrigated area in the United States, most of which is groundwater irrigated. Nebraska is the home of the largest companies in the center pivot irrigation industry. Center pivot technology has had a fundamental role in expanding groundwater-fed irrigation. Nebraska is not free from groundwater depletion issues, but these issues are more important in central and south-central parts of the aquifer underlying large, primarily agricultural, lands of Kansas and Texas. The natural aquifer recharge is much lower in the south-central parts of the region, which has caused large groundwater extractions to have more significant water declines than in Nebraska.
In the United States, the greatest portion of water quantity management regulatory oversight is left to individual states and local government agencies. Each of the three states has a unique legal system, which highly influences the framework of groundwater management locally. In Nebraska, groundwater is governed following two doctrines: correlative and reasonable use, which, in times of water shortage, lead to a proportional reduction of everyone’s allocation. Kansas uses the prior appropriation doctrine to manage groundwater, which applies the seniority principle when there is scarcity in water availability, making junior water rights holders bear the greatest risk. The absolute ownership doctrine is used to govern groundwater in Texas, which allows landowners to drill wells on their property and extract as much water as needed.
Institutional groundwater governance in Nebraska is performed by the system of 25 locally elected Natural Resources Districts having full regulatory power to manage the state’s groundwater. The local governments use a variety of regulatory and incentive-based groundwater management tools to achieve local groundwater management goals. In Kansas, the Chief Engineer in the Kansas Department of Agriculture is in charge of water administration for the state. The Kansas legislature established five Groundwater Management Districts to address groundwater depletion issues, which can make policy recommendations but do not have the power to regulate. Groundwater Conservation Districts were created in Texas to provide protection from uncontrolled water mining in the state. The districts gained more power to regulate and enforce rules over time; however, significant groundwater depletion issues remain.
Multiple lessons have been learned across the region since the beginning of groundwater development. Some of these could be applied in other areas seeking to address negative consequences of groundwater use. Forward-looking perspectives about groundwater management in the region vary from strong government-led solutions in Nebraska to various producer-initiated innovative approaches in Kansas and Texas.
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Article
John Nimmo and Rose Shillito
The infiltration of water into soil has profound importance as a central component of the hydrologic cycle and as the means of replenishing soil water that sustains terrestrial life. Systematic quantitative study of infiltration began in the 19th century and has continued through to the present as a central topic of soils, soil physics, and hydrology. Two forces drive infiltration: gravity, and capillarity, which results from the interaction of air-water surface tension with the solid components of soil. There are also two primary ways water moves into and within the soil. One is diffuse flow, through the pores between individual soil grains, moving from one to the next and so on. The other is preferential flow, through elongated channels such as those left by worms and roots. Diffuse flow is slow and continues as long as there is a net driving force. Preferential flow is fast and occurs only when water is supplied at high intensity, as during irrigation, major rainstorms, or floods. Both types are important in infiltration. Especially considering that preferential flow does not yet have a fully accepted theory, this means that infiltration entails multiple processes, some of them poorly understood. The soil at a given location has a limit to how much water it can absorb—the infiltration capacity. The interplay between the mode and rate of water supply, infiltration capacity, and characteristics of the soil and surrounding terrain determines infiltration into the soil. Much effort has gone into developing means of measuring and predicting both infiltration capacity and the actual infiltration rate. Various methods are available, and research is needed to improve their accuracy and ease of use.
Article
Timothy M. Weigand, Matthew W. Farthing, and Casey T. Miller
Groundwater modeling is widely relied upon by environmental scientists and engineers to advanced understanding, make predictions, and design solutions to water resource problems of importance to society. Groundwater models are tools used to approximate subsurface behavior, including the movement of water, the chemical composition of the phases present, and the temperature distribution. As a model is a simplification of a real-world system, approximations and uncertainties are inherent to the modeling process. Due to this, special consideration must be given to the role of uncertainty quantification, as essentially all groundwater systems are stochastic in nature.
Article
Francesca Greco, Martin Keulertz, and David Dent
Virtual water is the water contained in food, understood not only as the physical amount within the product but also as the amount of water required to generate it over time, from planting to final harvest. Despite Tony Allan defined virtual water in the context of the water needed to produce agricultural commodities, the concept has been subsequently expanded to include the water needed to produce non-agricultural commodities and industrial goods by Arjen Hoekstra, the creator of the water footprint indicator. Virtual water is a revolutionary concept because it describes something never conceptualized before: the water “embedded” in a product. Allan used virtual water “food water” and “embedded water” as interchangeable terms. Virtual water “trade” is the result of food trade: where agricultural goods are traded across countries, the water needed to produce that product in country A is, in fact, consumed in country B. Country B is therefore not consuming its own local resources when consuming imported food. Allan believed that this mechanism could alleviate irrigation water needs in water-scarce areas when food imports are in place. The virtual water content of a product (measured in liters per kilo) is provided not only by the sum of the irrigation water that has been withdrawn from surface and underground sources in order to grow crops—called “blue water.” Virtual water is also composed of the rainwater consumed by plants and persisting in agricultural soil moisture, which does not percolate down to the aquifers or go back to rivers and lakes. This second component is called “green water.” The green- and blue-water components form the total amount of water embedded in crops, and they are the two components of virtual water. Allan borrowed the concepts of green and blue water from the work of Malin Falkenmark. Virtual water and virtual water “trade” have been largely explored and studied at both local and global levels, becoming the subjects of thousands of papers between 1993 and 2022, which helped uncover global appropriation of a local resource that is unevenly distributed by nature and very often unequally “traded” by humans: water.
Article
Sander Turnhout and Wessel Ganzevoort
Citizen science can be understood as an approach to scientific research in which volunteer contributors undertake work in one or more phases of the research process. Citizen science projects can be initiated by volunteers or institutional actors (e.g., scientists in academia), and volunteers often work together with professional researchers. In citizen science, participants are not just objects of research (e.g., interviewee or survey respondent) but also research subjects—that is, taking an active role in collecting data, analyzing data sets, contributing to study design, or disseminating results (or combinations of these tasks). Participants may have little background knowledge on the topic under study, or they might be amateur enthusiasts with a great deal of existing expertise. Citizen science projects aim for genuine science outcomes, which can include scientific data sets and publications, new discoveries, or policy or management action.
Although citizen science projects are currently being developed and carried out in a wide variety of scientific fields, including medical biology (e.g., self-monitoring of disease symptoms), environmental science (e.g., monitoring air or water quality), history (e.g., archive transcription), and “citizen social science,” the field of biology especially has a long history of amateur involvement in research. Citizen science in this field often takes the form of collecting data on the natural world and submitting these data to biodiversity databases (e.g., reporting bird observations). In addition to collecting data, citizen scientists take up a large part of taxonomy, describing new species and rearranging, merging, and splitting species groups. Furthermore, citizen scientists are heavily involved in the verification process, checking on observations done by other citizen scientists and giving feedback, acting not only as gatekeepers toward data quality but also as authorities, educating the community.
Biodiversity citizen science projects may involve monitoring of the natural world initiated by communities of natural history enthusiasts, but research institutes in the field of biology and ecology also increasingly mobilize volunteers to collect data about the natural environment. Compared to many other domains in which citizen science is being applied, biodiversity monitoring especially stands out for its long history of amateur involvement in natural history. Because initiating biodiversity citizen science projects will thus often mean that research and policy actors engage with volunteer-driven networks, understanding these networks aids effective and just design of biodiversity citizen science.
Although engaging with these long-standing networks of natural history offers many opportunities, perspectives of professional ecological research and communities of practice can differ markedly. In the current state of affairs, scientific literature shows tensions between volunteers operating in their communities of practice and scientists operating in theirs. Among others, these differences involve the meaning of observations: Whereas in research these are given meaning by gathering them up and statistically analyzing the resulting data sets, within a community of practice observations predominantly reflect human–nature relationships and are shared with expectations of respectful use for the protection of nature. Not only can the meaning of observations differ but also the act of validation can refer to very different activities as well as to different aspects of quality of information. In the community of practice of observers in the field, validation plays an important role in establishing relations of trust and authority within the network, with a strong emphasis on correct observations and volunteers’ motivation for learning and belonging. Conversely, validation in the scientific practice of research concerns the structure of the monitoring protocol and the statistical demands placed on the data.
For scientists and policymakers, respectful cooperation with networks of amateur biodiversity recorders requires taking their perspectives seriously and respecting their way of working and the communities they have built. It also requires citizen science organizers to think carefully about whose questions are being answered. For citizen scientists, understanding the (statistical) needs of scientists and the relevance for policy allows their network to grow through funding and training.
Article
Mieke van Hemert
Food sovereignty is a paradigm on food system transformation advanced by peasant organizations worldwide in response to the commoditization of food through free trade agreements, deteriorating environmental and livelihood conditions in rural areas, and marginalization of the peasantry. Food sovereignty is an alternative to the current global, industrial corporate food regime and involves changes at all levels of the food system with relocalization, regaining control over territories, and agroecological production as key strivings. Food is viewed as a basic human right, as opposed to a commodity. Domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency have priority over long-distance trade. Food is regarded as a part of culture, heritage, and cosmovision. Agroecological practices that restore agrobiodiversity and lessen dependence and indebtedness of farmers are to replace monocultures, which are highly dependent on external inputs and harmful to the environment. There is a central role for smallholders and rural peoples in food production, who should (re)gain control over land and territories, individually and collectively, especially women. This is to be realized through forms of agrarian reform that go beyond land redistribution. Societal change toward peaceful coexistence, equality, and care for the earth is an ultimate goal.
Food sovereignty is a research topic in a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, geography, law, philosophy, history, agronomy, and ecology, alongside transdisciplinary research on food systems. While first advanced as a mobilizing concept by the transnational agrarian movement La Vía Campesina in 1996, food sovereignty has become a policy framework adopted by various governments and international organizations. The movement has successfully lobbied the United Nations and the Food and Agriculture Organization to adopt new rights and guidelines that bring obligations for governments to protect rural peoples against transnational corporations undermining their access to land, water, forests, and seeds. The movement itself has diversified, and its definition of food sovereignty has evolved and become more inclusive.
The food sovereignty paradigm has been criticized for being too expansive, complex, and unclear. Analyses of the competing discourses of food sovereignty and food security reveal contrasts and complementarities. Scholarly debate has also focused on the position of both peasants and farm workers in the capitalist economy and on processes of de- and repeasantization.
Societal and scholarly debate on the various dimensions of food sovereignty is ongoing. Academic research foregrounds fundamental questions, including what role the state is expected to play, what forms of trade are envisaged, how the rights approach functions, the interplay of different transformative processes, changing economic and ecological contexts, tensions between different social groups, and power-related challenges. The number of case studies on the struggle for food sovereignty is growing and exhibits wide geographical diversity.
Article
Sébastien Dutreuil and Pierre Charbonnier
The Anthropocene was proposed in 2000 as the name of a new geological epoch, succeeding to the Holocene, and marked by the influence of humanity as a biological species on its geological environment. It has resonated differently in three major epistemological domains, where the configurations of the debate has varied. For Earth system science, within which the term emerged, the Anthropocene was a keyword encompassing and stimulating large research programs which stimulated original and new scientific investigations and synthesis. The term had a more specific and evidential meaning for the geological community, which seized it after 2008. Documenting empirically the Anthropocene meant different things for these two scientific communities: tracking down every single impact humanity has on the environment on which humanity depends upon to survive for the former; analyzing how this influence can be documented in Earth’s strata for the latter. These two different epistemological regimes are intertwined with two different normative registers. Earth system science assumed from the very start a normative position: international experts elaborate normative concepts and produce scientific synthesis meant to define the conceptual space, quantitatively delimited, within which political decisions related to global environmental issues ought to be taken. By contrast, geologists were more cautious, and for some, reluctant, to engage in normative issues; but political issues unavoidably emerged when the starting date was discussed. This politicization of the debate was accompanied by human and social sciences, seizing up the debate at the same time as geologists and lay public did, toward the end of the 2000s.
Article
Isabela Espindola and Pilar Villar
The sharing of transboundary water resources, whether surface or groundwater, is a significant challenge, both in theory and practice. Countries in situations of sharing these natural resources are predisposed to interact with each other. These interactions, here called transboundary water interactions, are characterized by the coexistence of cooperation and conflict, which can arise at different governance levels. However, negotiations around transboundary water resources primarily occur between diplomats and high government members from riparian countries and river basin organization (RBO) managers. Transboundary water negotiations are usually considered high-level political discussions, given the complexity and scale of the water challenges. Consequently, decision-making processes incorporate only a limited number of participants, who make decisions capable of impacting the entire population that depend on the shared waters. Over the last 20 years, there has been a need for greater transparency and a participatory process in transboundary water negotiations, especially for local community engagement and collaboration in these processes. Many of the negotiation processes around transboundary water resources need the participation of municipalities and local populations, concomitant with the involvement of RBOs, to carry out decisions to manage transboundary waters in an integrated manner. There are several reasons for this demand, including negotiation effectiveness, contestation prevention, data sharing, ensuring continuing participation and collaboration, and promoting public awareness related to water resources. Discussing social participation, particularly in the management of transboundary water resources, requires attention to the historical context and its constraints. Considering the enormous challenge, the experiences of local community engagement in transboundary water negotiations in South America, especially from the Guarani Aquifer and the La Plata Basin, are good examples for improving this discussion around transboundary water interactions and local community engagement. The La Plata Basin is the second-largest transboundary basin in the continent, shared by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay, while the Guarani Aquifer is one of the largest reservoirs of freshwater worldwide, shared by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Even with both having cooperation agreements in place between the riparian states, there are still great difficulties with regard to the participation of local communities in transboundary water negotiations.
Article
John Loomis and Lucas Bair
Outdoor recreation is an important and growing activity worldwide. Water-based outdoor recreation is a subset that includes various activities such as fishing, boating, and swimming. While a large portion of water-based recreation is either free or provided at administratively set minimal entrance fees, these activities still involve significant economic value in aggregate. Because many water-based recreation activities do not have market prices, economists have developed nonmarket valuation methods to estimate the full scope of economic values to participants associated with these activities.
Estimates of the economic value of water-based recreation are important in water resource management. While water resource infrastructure investment decisions typically include the economic value of recreation, periodic evaluation of infrastructure operations after construction may not. Re-evaluation of operations is particularly important if rapid changes in future conditions such as drought or changes in recreational demand occur. Because developing original site-based estimates of economic value requires significant effort, it is important to understand the general economic value of specific water-based recreational activities and methods used to transfer benefit estimates from existing studies to other sites.
Article
Erin O'Donnell and Elizabeth Macpherson
In settler colonial states like Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, water for the environment and the water rights of Indigenous Peoples often share the common experience of being too little and too late. Water pathways have been constrained and defined by settler colonialism, and as a result, settler state water law has both a legitimacy problem, in failing to acknowledge or implement the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and a sustainability problem, as the health of water systems continues to decline. In both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, the focus of water law has historically been to facilitate use of the water resource to support economic development, excluding the rights of Indigenous Peoples and poorly protecting water ecosystems. However, in the early 21st century, both countries made significant advances in recognizing the needs of the environment and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) provides an important bicultural and bijural framework that is beginning to influence water management. In 2017, as part of a Treaty dispute settlement, Aotearoa New Zealand passed legislation to recognize Te Awa Tupua (the Whanganui River) as a legal person and created a new collaborative governance regime for the river, embedding the interests and values of Māori at the heart of river management. In Australia, water recovery processes to increase environmental flows have been under way since the 1990s, using a combination of water buybacks and water savings through increased efficiency. There has been growing awareness of Indigenous water rights in Australia, although progress to formally return water rights to Indigenous Peoples remains glacially slow. Like Aotearoa New Zealand, in 2017, Australia also passed its first legislation that recognized a river (the Birrarung/Yarra River) as a living entity and, in doing so, formally recognized the responsibilities of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people as Traditional Owners of the river. This trend toward more holistic river management under a relational paradigm, in which the relationships between peoples and places are centered and celebrated, creates a genuine opportunity for water governance in settler states that begins to address both the legitimacy and sustainability flaws in settler state water law. However, these symbolic shifts must be underpinned by relationships of genuine trust between Indigenous Peoples and the state, and they require significant investment from the state in their implementation.
