William Pentland, Contributor
I write about energy and environmental issues.
Massive reserves of “freshwater” are buried beneath the seabed on continental shelves around the world, including off Australia, China, North America and South Africa.
This is the conclusion of a new study by a team of Australian scientists that appears in this week’s issue of the journal, Nature.
Based on an analysis of seafloor water studies conducted for oil and gas exploration purposes, the study showed that an estimated that 500,000 cubic kilometers of low-salinity water is trapped in aquifers under the ocean floor.
“The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we’ve extracted from the Earth’s sub-surface in the past century since 1900,” said Vincent Post, a groundwater hydro geologist from Flinders University in Adelaide and the new study’s lead author.
This new freshwater resource could give regions suffering with limited access to freshwater more options for combating the impact of droughts and alleviating the impact of water scarcity on future generations.
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