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Dec 16

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Recharging Groundwater

Learn more about efforts to recharge groundwater
so it can be available during droughts.

Image credit: USGS

Transcript of the Audio Podcast:

Recharging groundwater during wet years… on this CurrentCast.

During the recent drought, California has drawn on groundwater reserves to irrigate crops and make up for less precipitation and snow melt.

Heather Cooley of the Pacific Institute – a nonprofit research group – says California is looking at ways to recharge groundwater during wetter years.

Cooley: “In the simplest version of groundwater recharge, you flood the area and then the water gradually infiltrates, percolates down into the groundwater.”

For a faster, but more energy intensive option…

Cooley: “In other areas, they do have injection. So there are pumps that are essentially injecting water underground.”

But, Cooley says, recharging groundwater deep in the earth is challenging, so conservation is the best option.

Photo credit: Don Poggensee / USDA NRCS

Support for CurrentCast comes from the Mitsubishi Corporation Foundation for the Americas. Learn more online at CurrentCast.org

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