There's a giant underground ocean hidden in the middle of this Chinese desert.
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When we think about the deserts of the world, water abundance is one of the last things that come to mind. But that might change for the Taklamakan Desert in northwest China.
While studying the amount of carbon dioxide in the desert's air, a team of researchers was surprised to learn that large amounts of the greenhouse gas were disappearing around a region of the desert called the Tarim basin.
The most likely explanation, they recently reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, is a massive underground ocean that has more water than all five Great Lakes in North America combined.
"Never before have people dared to imagine so much water under the sand," professor Li Yan — who led the study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital — told the South China Morning Post, where we first learned about the study. "Our definition of desert may have to change."
A basin is, by definition, a valley that collects water from drainage systems, like water that has melted and is running down the face of nearby, snow-capped mountains. Two mountain ranges border the Tarim basin: to the north are the Tian Shan Mountains, and to the south are the Kunlun Mountains.
But, if you look at the Tarim basin, you won't see any water:
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That's partly because locals collect most of the melt water to irrigate crops. The rest either seeps into the ground or evaporates into the dry desert air.
The team visited nearly 200 different locations across the desert to collect deep underground water samples. They then measured the amount of carbon dioxide in each water sample, and discovered that it had high concentrations of carbon dioxide — enough that suggested the ground was absorbing about 500 billion pounds of the greenhouse gas each year. (For comparison, 500 billion pounds is about 0.0005% of the amount of carbon dioxide stored in Earth's oceans.)
This qualifies the Tarim basin as what experts call a carbon sink zone, where carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere in significant amounts. Most carbon sink zones are densely populated with plants that absorb carbon dioxide from the air and produce oxygen. Being sparse of plants, deserts are not usually considered for this title.
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An example of a common carbon sink zone in a rain forest in Jamaica.
So how did this desert come to be such an active carbon dioxide sucker?
It dates back to 2,000 years ago when settlers in the region began irrigating the land, the scientists suspect. And the soil of the local farmlands is salty, like the ocean, which dissolves carbon dioxide from the air more readily than fresh water.
"As a result, agricultural development over human history has enhanced the carbon sink," they write in their report.
The team also used their carbon-dioxide measurements from underground water samples and compared it with CO2 levels in the surface water to calculate how much water had seeped into the basin over time and the overall amount of water underground. They estimate that as much as 10 times the amount in all of the great lakes could be down there, they told South China Morning Post.
The scientists don't advise locals to go digging for it, though, because it's extremely salty and highly carbonated from all of the carbon dioxide it's been absorbing for the last two millennia.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/surprising-discovery-points-giant-underground-215220972.html
Huge 'Ocean' Discovered Inside Earth
by Ker Than | February 28, 2007(http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/001/250/i02/070228_beijing_anom_01.jpg?1296070288)
QuoteScientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean.
The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet's deep mantle. [The World's Biggest Oceans and Seas]
The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a forthcoming monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union.
http://www.livescience.com/1312-huge-ocean-discovered-earth.html
Central Nevada Regional Water Authority
(http://www.cnrwa.com/i/map.png)
'Huge' water resource exists under Africa
By Matt McGrath
Science reporter, BBC World Service
20 April 2012QuoteScientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater.
They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface.
The team have produced the most detailed map yet of the scale and potential of this hidden resource.
Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters , they stress that large scale drilling might not be the best way of increasing water supplies.
Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water.
Demand for water is set to grow markedly in coming decades due to population growth and the need for irrigation to grow crops.
(http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/304/media/images/59747000/jpg/_59747529_aquifiers_africa_464map.jpg)
Africa aquifer map
Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated.
When water falls as rain or snow, much of it either flows into rivers or is used to provide moisture to plants and crops. What is left over trickles down to the layers of rock that sit beneath the soil.
And just like a giant sponge, this ground water is held in the spaces between the rocks and in the tiny inter-connected spaces between individual grains in a rock like sandstone.
These bodies of wet rock are referred to as aquifers. Ground water does not sit still in the aquifer but is pushed and pulled by gravity and the weight of water above it.
The movement of the water through the aquifer removes many impurities and it is often cleaner than water on the surface.
Now scientists have for the first time been able to carry out a continent-wide analysis of the water that is hidden under the surface in aquifers. Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London (UCL) have mapped in detail the amount and potential yield of this groundwater resource across the continent.
QuoteAstr0144: The team visited nearly 200 different locations across the desert to collect deep underground water samples. They then measured the amount of carbon dioxide in each water sample, and discovered that it had high concentrations of carbon dioxide — enough that suggested the ground was absorbing about 500 billion pounds of the greenhouse gas each year. (For comparison, 500 billion pounds is about 0.0005% of the amount of carbon dioxide stored in Earth's oceans.)
Yikes!, the water from rains is filtering the atmosphere of carbon dioxide as gravity pulls it down. I always say, as long as there is water in the earth, there will be oil in the earth. Carbon Dioxide maybe one of the core ingredients to oil as it settles down to where high pressures from heat are bubbling it up into the mix.
The Ogallala Aquifer here in the midwest is huge and old T bone Pickens wants all that for himself, to sell to us. The Nevada water maybe part of the Ogallala basin. Then again, the continents may very well be floating on top of a water world.
The GULF OIL disaster was made worse because GAS pressure was 40 times HIGHER than was normal or expected. That was why it was so hard to seal the leak
At approximately 9:45 pm CDT, on 20 April 2010, high-pressure methane gas from the well expanded into the drilling riser and rose into the drilling rig, where it ignited and exploded, engulfing the platform.
Daniel Bates (30 August 2010). "BP accepts blame for Gulf of Mexico spill after leaked memo reveals engineer misread pressure reading". Daily Mail (London).