NASA study warns of freshwater decline in India
Washington, May 18: Availability of freshwater has declined in the northern and eastern parts of India, says a new study that combined an array of NASA satellite observations of Earth with data on human activities to map locations where freshwater is changing around the globe.
The study, published in the journal Nature, found that Earth's wetland areas are getting more wet and dry areas are getting drier due to a variety of factors, including human water management, climate change and natural cycles.
Areas in northern and eastern India, the Middle East, California and Australia are among the hotspots where overuse of water resources has caused a serious decline in the availability of freshwater, and without corrective actions by the governments to preserve water, the situation is likely to worsen in these areas, the Guardian reported this week citing the study.
The first-of-its-kind study used 14 years of observations from the US/German-led Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft mission to track global trends in freshwater in 34 regions around the world.
"This is the first time that we've used observations from multiple satellites in a thorough assessment of how freshwater availability is changing, everywhere on Earth," said Matt Rodell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland,
"A key goal was to distinguish shifts in terrestrial water storage caused by natural variability - wet periods and dry periods associated with El Nino and La Nina, for example - from trends related to climate change or human impacts, like pumping groundwater out of an aquifer faster than it is replenished," Rodell added.
Freshwater is found in lakes, rivers, soil, snow, groundwater and ice. Freshwater loss from the ice sheets at the poles - attributed to climate change - has implications for sea level rise.
On land, freshwater is one of the most essential of Earth's resources, for drinking water and agriculture.
The researchers found that while some regions' water supplies are relatively stable, others experienced increases or decreases.
"What we are witnessing is major hydrologic change," said co-author Jay Famiglietti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
"We see a distinctive pattern of the wet land areas of the world getting wetter - those are the high latitudes and the tropics - and the dry areas in between getting dryer. Embedded within the dry areas we see multiple hotspots resulting from groundwater depletion," Famiglietti warned.
Famiglietti noted that while water loss in some regions, like the melting ice sheets and alpine glaciers, is clearly driven by warming climate, it will require more time and data to determine the driving forces behind other patterns of freshwater change.
However, the GRACE satellite observations alone couldn't tell the researchers what was causing the apparent trends.
"We examined information on precipitation, agriculture and groundwater pumping to find a possible explanation for the trends estimated from GRACE," said co-author Hiroko Beaudoing of Goddard and the University of Maryland in College Park.
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Surat LS candidate Nilesh Kumbhani whose nomination form was rejected suspended from Congress
Ahmedabad, Apr 25: The Gujarat Congress on Friday suspended from the party for six years its Surat Lok Sabha candidate Nilesh Kumbhani, whose nomination form was rejected over discrepancies leading to the BJP's Mukesh Dalal getting elected unopposed.
A statement from the Congress said the party's disciplinary committee decided to suspend Kumbhani after thorough discussion, adding it had come to the conclusion that the nomination form was rejected due to gross negligence on his part or "in connivance with the BJP".
"To be fair to you we have given time to you to explain your case but instead of coming before the party disciplinary committee you have gone incommunicado. After your form was rejected by the authorities, BJP went ahead and got form of other eight candidates withdrawn. This has deprived people of Surat their voting rights," the Congress disciplinary committee headed by Balu Patel said.
"People of Surat and party workers have become very angry due to your action and are expressing their anger in different ways. The Congress party has decided to suspend you for six years from the party," the press note said.
Kumbhani's nomination form was rejected on April 21 after his three proposers submitted affidavits to the district returning officer claiming the signatures on the document was not theirs.
The nomination form of Suresh Padsala, the Congress' substitute candidate from Surat, was also invalidated on the same grounds.
In his order, Returning Officer Sourabh Pardhi said the three nomination forms submitted by Kumbhani and Padsala were rejected after prima facie discrepancy was found in the signatures of the proposers and they did not appear to be genuine.
Kumbhani, a former corporator from Surat, had unsuccessfully fought the 2022 Assembly polls from Kamrej there.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed from Surat Lok Sabha constituency on April 22 after all other nominees, including one from BSP, withdrew from the fray one by one on the last day of withdrawing papers.
