In this context, a new study has shown that the quantity of water is decreasing in more than half of the world’s lakes and reservoirs, a trend which threatens this vital source of fresh water and which is widely attributed to global warming and its human overuse.
According to the study, published Thursday in the scientific journal “Science”, about 25% of the world’s population lives in areas whose lakes are suffering from drying up or whose water from their dams is evaporating.
source of fresh water
Lakes cover about 3% of the Earth’s surface, but they account for 87% of the liquid fresh water found there, which is used for human consumption, agriculture and electricity generation.
Previous studies have examined the drying up and deterioration of the condition of the Great Lakes individually, but this study is the first to provide a detailed presentation of the overall trends and causes of the observed changes, thanks to satellite observations.
What’s the matter?
Dr. Ramadan Hamza, an academic and expert in water strategies and policies, said in an interview with Sky News Arabia:
Various scientific communities around the world agree that climate change and its direct impact on water resources has become one of the major global challenges of the 21st century, especially in recent years. The disastrous consequences of climate change are affecting all regions of the world, from the drying up of rivers and lakes in Europe to the drying up of the Colorado River in America, to the devastating effects of climate change on its resources and masses. of water. Water resources are most vulnerable to scarcity and scarcity, given the planet’s climate change at an unprecedented accelerated rate and its stormy fluctuations in the natural and biological balance. Rampant climate change naturally leads to destabilization of environmental and social conditions worldwide, since water is the source of life and the basis of development, and disruptions and conflicts resulting from lack of water and its sources can undermine the process of preserving natural ecosystems and destroy the sustainability of social and economic systems. The drying up of many lakes and reservoirs of dams, in whole or in part, affects the quality of water, due to the increase in salinity and the increase in the concentration of heavy metals in it, and thus becomes a very negative impact on human safety and health, which is already happening now. Lack of water adversely affects the growth and density of plant cover, including creeping from the boundaries of tree-covered lands towards increasingly higher latitudes due to increased temperature, and at During this process, animal and plant species less able to adapt may become extinct, as plant and animal communities respond to climate change individually rather than collectively, so the forest community may not be able to to move completely to the upper levels of the slope. The criterion is the capacity to adapt: ​​species able to adapt will survive while those that do not have the capacity will disappear, in the context of the impact of climate change on the planet’s biodiversity. Despite all these stormy environmental changes, the planet Earth will remain populated and the interaction between man and nature will continue, because humans were able, even during the ice ages, to maintain their existence.
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