Melnburn, New Zealand, February 15, 2016, 00:37 – REGNUM More four billion people on the planet Earth , at least, a just per month to live in conditions of acute shortage of fresh water , still and a half billion people in the world are experiencing water shortages throughout the year. Published in the journal Science Advances February 12 a new study scientific Dutch University Twente of the Center for water research (Twente water Centre) makes scientific a new look at the problem of water supply to the population.
The authors Mesfin Mekonnen and Arjen Hoekstra analyzed the water supply of the population of different regions of the world and came to the conclusion that water shortages was slightly understated. And now her should be seen as a factor of global risk. The annual report of the risk assessment at the World Economic Forum water crises were referred to the development of global risks. Among the factors, stimulus increasing scarcity of fresh water were highlighted: an increase in world population, changing consumption patterns and expansion of irrigated farming.
Fresh water distributed on at land surface is uneven, in addition, availability of water varies considerably during the season. Therefore scientists accepted decision to study in detail not only the space, but and time changes in freshwater availability, in fact geographical and time a mismatch between the demand for water and her availability is the essence of the problem.
The authors divided the entire territory of the earth’s land on the size of the cells 30 to 30 minutes every month to find out attitudes of consumption of water resources B the inside of the cell to the the total water supply in the area. So, was obtained by water scarcity index (water scarcity – WS). The monthly deficit was classified as low if the water consumption does not exceed the water supply (WS
After processing the data for ten years – from 1996 to 2005 – scientists have prepared a series of detailed maps, which clearly demonstrated the spatial and temporal distribution of water deficit.
According to given scientists calculations, the acute shortage of water, at least, for the year experiencing four billion people, or two-thirds of the world’s population. the new data are much higher than previous estimates, according to which in the conditions of problems live water availability from 1.7 to 3.1 billion people. Previous estimates have been made on an annual, rather than on a monthly basis and not considered serious as the seasonal fluctuation of water availability and water use.
Thus, humanity must not forget the importance of freshwater ecosystems concluded scientists University Twente . To remedy the situation must be care not only waters and streams, but also the optimization of natural resources on their territories pools.
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