Irrigation For Farming Could Leave Many Of The World’s Streams and Rivers Dry

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October 3rd, 2019

The long arms of pivot irrigation rigs deliver water from the Ogallala Aquifer to circular fields of corn in northwestern Kansas. A new study suggests many of the world’s rivers and streams could dry up because people are draining underground aquifers that sustain streams through dry periods.

Dan Charles / NPR

Something odd is happening to streams and rivers on the high plains of Kansas and Colorado. Some have disappeared.

“We would go and visit these streams, and in many cases it’s like a dirt bike channel. It’s no longer functioning as a stream,” says Joshuah Perkin, a biologist at Texas A&M University who studies the fish that live in these streams.

These waterways, he says, were partly fed by groundwater: Water moving underground, through rock and sand, draining into streambeds or bubbling up in natural springs. That groundwater kept the streams flowing through dry periods.

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