A High Spatiotemporal Assessment of Consumptive Water Use and Water Scarcity in the Conterminous United States

Abstract

There is an inextricable link between energy production and food/feed/fiber cultivation with available water resources. Currently in the United States, agriculture represents the largest sector of consumptive water use making up 80.7 % of the total. Electricity generation in the U.S. is projected to increase by 24 % in the next two decades and globally, the production of liquid transportation fuels are forecasted to triple over the next 25-years, having significant impacts on the import/export market and global economies. The tension between local water supply and demand across water use sectors needs to be evaluated with regards to risk evaluation and planning. To this end, we present a systematic method to spatially and temporally disaggregate nationally available 5-year county-scale water use data to a monthly 1/8°scale. Our study suggests that while 81.9 % of the U.S. exhibits unstressed local conditions at the annual scale, 13.7 % is considered water scarce; this value increases to 17.3 % in the summer months. The use of mean annual water scarcity at a coarser basin scale (~373,000 ha) was found to mask information critical for water planning whereas finer spatiotemporal scales revealed local areas that are water stressed or water scarce. Nationally,~1 % of these Bunstressed^basins actually contained water stressed or water scarce areas equivalent to at least 30 % and 17 %, respectively, of the basin area. These Water Resour Manage (2015) 29:5185-5200 Present address: Monsanto Company, 800 North Lindbergh Blvd., St. Louis, Missouri 63167, USA percentages increase to 34 % and 48 % in the summer months. Additionally, 15 % of basins classified as Bunstressed^contained water scarce areas in excess of 10 % during the summer.

A First Estimation of County-Based Green Water Availability and Its Implications for Agriculture and Bioenergy Production in the United States

“…However, county-level runoff (flow per unit area) [9] and per-capita blue water resources (calculated by dividing annual runoff volume [9] by population in each county [10]) range from 0.2 to 3040 mm/year and from 2.3 to 7,846,654 m 3 /cap/year, respectively. In terms of water scarcity, Moore et al [11] suggest that 81.9% of areas in the U.S. are in the low water scarcity category. However, 4.4% and 13.7% of areas in the U.S. are moderately and highly water scarce, respectively.…”

“…However, 4.4% and 13.7% of areas in the U.S. are moderately and highly water scarce, respectively. In the summer, especially, hot spots (areas with high water scarcity) increase in the western regions [11]. Mekonnen et al [4] estimated that about 130 million people, or 42% of the U.S. population, are facing we also compared ER estimated from three different methods to evaluate variability and uncertainty in green water resource assessments.…”

Crop evapotranspiration calculation using infrared thermometers aboard center pivots

“…Center pivots now occupy over 50% and 80% of the irrigated area in the USA and US Great Plains, respectively (USDA, 2014). Their widespread adoption, along with proper design, installation, and management, offer unprecedented opportunity to increase crop water productivity, but nonetheless represent a primary consumer of freshwater resources (Moore et al, 2015). Center pivot rotational speeds can be managed where angular positions of sprinklers are distributed to different times of the day.…”

Impact of water diversion on hydrological regime of the Atreyee river of Indo-Bangladesh

“…Low flows can also offer staffing opportunities for riparian plant species in regularly inundated floodplains (Wharton et al 1981). Moreover, water diversion and flow modification invites inequality in water distributions in different reaches of the basin and in some places it entraps a large section of basin dwellers in stress of water scarcity (Moore et al 2015). Until and unless any natural change in flow character or re-establishing natural flow in river, such flow curtailing will continue the vicious cycle of water scarcity among those section of people who are already caught by this problem.…”