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To prepare this photographic report for La Vanguardia Readers’ Photos I was inspired by the Angel fountain in the Pedralbes monastery in Barcelona, ??while I watched one of its taps drip.
When the water fell, it formed a beautiful drop in its different shapes, which I captured in these images, like an angel, a pearl, a tear, with the colors of its surroundings.
And it made me think about climate change and the persistent drought. Did you know that gigantic reserves of fresh water have been found under the oceans? Could this be the solution to the lack of this essential liquid for humanity?
According to the Aquae Foundation, in 2013, Australian scientists from Flinders University discovered enormous reserves or aquifers of fresh water under the oceans, located kilometers away from the coasts of Australia, China, North America and South Africa. .
Five years later, research was published for the electromagnetic study of freshwater resources beneath the United States Atlantic continental shelf. In 2019, it was finally made public that these scientists from Columbia University, in New York, had confirmed, through the use of electromagnetic waves, that almost 3,000 cubic kilometers of fresh water trapped in sediments rested on the northeastern coast of the United States. porous under the salt water of the sea.
According to the calculations of these researchers, this reserve runs from the coast of the state of Massachusetts to New Jersey and covers about 350 km of the Atlantic coast. To give us an idea, if the aquifer were on the surface, it would form a lake of about 40,000 km2.
During the end of the Ice Age, large amounts of fresh water became trapped in rock sediments, known as “fossil water.” These reserves are also believed to be fed by rain and bodies of water filtered through the sediments in the land and reach the sea.
Researchers will find that the Ocean aquifer is sweeter near the coast and saltier as it goes deeper into the sea, where a desalination plant would be needed to make it drinkable.
As detailed by the geophysicists, fresh terrestrial water usually contains salt in quantities of less than one part per thousand, the same thing that was detected in the part closest to the coast in the ocean water reserve. But, at its outer limits, the aquifer reaches 15 parts per thousand (seawater typically has 35 parts per thousand).
Therefore, could the fresh water under the oceans be used? Let’s return to the Aquae Foundation, which includes the results of a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, based on research by Holly Michael and Xuan Yu, from the University of Delaware, which suggests that taking advantage of these resources could lead to adverse impacts for the environment. Land.
Through computer simulations and models, they demonstrated how the use of freshwater resources offshore, with methods such as those used in oil extraction, would threaten aquifer systems on land, causing reduced groundwater availability on land. .
Of course, there is a ray of hope, because this research considered that a specific use of these oceanic freshwater resources closer to the coast could be positive, especially if the population increases and the scarcity of freshwater continues to grow. In mainland.
