May 19, 2023 – 10:07 AM
According to a recent study, half of the world’s major lakes are losing their water resources due to human activity. It can be read on EurekAlert. The drought is largely due to a warming climate and increased human influence.
It was published in the journal Science Stady Its researchers examined trends in global lake water resources between 1992 and 2020 for nearly 2,000 of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs. Although we already know that the volume of water in the largest lakes and reservoirs has been gradually decreasing in recent years, the root causes and volume were not clear until now.
The research has now revealed that over the past 30 years or so, the largest lakes, including the Caspian Sea and Lake Titicaca, have lost an average of 22 gigatonnes of water per year, and the rate of water loss is increasing.
Among the main causes are unsustainable human activity (Aral and Dead Sea) and increasing average temperature, the latter being a bigger problem in Afghanistan, Egypt and Mongolia. However, the water level rose in a quarter of the lakes examined, for example, this also occurred as a result of damming on the Inner Tibetan Plateau.
Natural lakes and man-made reservoirs store about 87 percent of the Earth’s fresh water, even though they only cover 3 percent of the planet’s surface.
