Fossil Aquifers

Fossil Aquifers are large underground reserve of water that were established under past climatic and
geological conditions. They can underlie present-day semi-arid environments, provide key source
of groundwater in otherwise water scarce regions.
Contents
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1 What are Fossil Aquifers

2 Examples of Fossil Aquifer use and development

o 2.1 Ogallala aquifer

o 2.2 Saudi Arabia

3 Potential for productive and sustainable use

4 References

What are Fossil Aquifers

The water in fossil aquifers accumulated under past environmental conditions, with subsequent geological
change sealing the water and preventing further recharge or significant outflows (Soos, 2011). These
aquifers are often geologically confined, bounded at their upper and lower limits by impermeable rocks.
This geological setting results in the water being stored under pressure, with the pressure, or peizometric
head, of water in the aquifer above the actual height of the water (Tsur, Park and Issar, 2007). This means
that water can be abstracted in part using the aquifers pressure, rather than pumping from the water
table which may be at considerable depth. In confined aquifers, as water is pumped, there is a gradual
reduction in the pressure of water remaining in the aquifer. In unconfined aquifers the water table falls. In
both cases this results in a greater pumping head being required, and a corresponding increase in energy
and cost of water abstraction.

Fossil aquifers often exist below the level of other recharge aquifers. This makes them difficult to identify.
Recent analyses in the middle east have used airborne sounding radar to measure electromagnetic
changes in the landscape that indicates water (Soos, 2011).

Examples of Fossil Aquifer use and development

Fossil aquifers have been used across the world as the basis for key irrigation-based agricultural
development. Over time, the finite nature of these resources is being realised, posing a challenge to
established agricultural behaviour.

Ogallala aquifer

The Ogallala aquifer underlies the great plains of the United States. It has underpinned large areas of
irrigated development in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, and Nabrasca. Its waters
supply 20% of irrigated land in the United States (BBC, 2003). Significant development of the resource
started with the introduction of improved pumping technologies in the 1940s, and large-scale irrigation
applications. Withdrawal rates exceed recharge rates by 50:1, and decreased pressure heads in the
aquifer, and consequentially higher pumping costs are increasingly forcing farmers to return to dryland
agriculture. This change has implications for global food supply, due to the significant volume of grain for
the North American and Global Market grown using Ogallala water (Overmann, 2005).

Saudi Arabia

In the 1970s, inspired by the success of oil drilling technology, Saudi Arabia extended the technology to
mine fossil aquifers under their territory (Polycarpou, 2011). Their aim was to achieve food self sufficiency.
In 2008, the Saudi Government announced a tapering off of the wheat industry, with a policy to increase
imports and abandon wheat production by 2016, in the face of rapidly declining fossil water resources
(Laumer, 2008). Between 2008 and 2011, domestic wheat production decreased by 2/3 (Polycarpou,
2011). The abandoning of aspired food self sufficiency in Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries reliant on
fossil aquifers has led to their dependence on global markets to meet the needs of their growing
populations. The depletion of fossil aquifers has also resulted in these countries increasingly turning
towards investment in land and agriculture in other regions, notably sub-Saharan Africa to ensure their
long-term food security. This is leading to a new wave of land grabs by foreign investors. Despite this
shift in focus, there remains a need for new water supplies in Saudi Arabia, and increased efforts have
been targeted at identifying new reserves of fossil groundwater to meet population water needs,
increasingly with the help of outside expertise, including from Europe with GIZ having funded exploration
in recent times (Shafy, 2010).

Potential for productive and sustainable use

Assessment of fossil aquifers is not absolute, but dependent on the quality and scope of measurement
techniques. New measurement technologies can reveal recharge that was previously undetectable. In
2013 a significant volume of water previous considered fossil under the Northern Sahara Desert was
found through satellite measurements to be recharging at a rate of 1.4km3/yr. At abstraction rates of the
early 21st century of around 5km3/yr, the aquifer was being significantly over-abstracted however the
existence of recharge, open avenues for long-term sustainable use of the resource (Science Daily, 2013).

In 2012 it was announced that significant quantities of fossil groundwater existed in otherwise water-
scarce areas of north and central Africa (MacDonal, et al, 2012). The water was recharged 5000 years
ago under previous, wetter, climate regimes in the continent. These reserves are estimated to be 100
times larger than the annual renewable freshwater in Africa (McGrath, 2012). The fragmented nature of
these fossil resources means that they have the potential to meet growing population needs and improve
local water access to 300 million Africans without access to safe water, helping to alleviate poverty and
poor health.
While providing significant resource, the researchers were at pains to emphasise the potential for small-
scale development, using low-yielding hand pumps for village supplies, and the unsuitability of the
identified resource for large-scale exploitation. This argument is related both to the geological conditions
and to a desire to use the fossil water for long-term sustainable social and economic improvement
(MacDonald et al. 2012). This recommendation aviods the short-termism and over-development that has
characterised fossil water use during the 20th century, including the Middle East and the United States
discussed above. Such sustainable small scale use of fossil aquifers offers a future development avenue
for these finite resources.