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The “water machine” of Bengal: a data-driven and policy-supported strategic use of aquifers for irrigation is needed to maximize their benefits

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Title The “water machine” of Bengal: a data-driven and policy-supported strategic use of aquifers for irrigation is needed to maximize their benefits
 
Creator Mukherji, Aditi
 
Subject groundwater irrigation
water use
aquifers
groundwater recharge
groundwater table
shallow water
irrigated farming
pumps
policies
farmers
 
Description For decades, millions of farmers in Bangladesh have been capturing more water than even the world’s largest dams. They did so simply by irrigating intensively in the summer dry season using water from shallow wells. The ability to use groundwater to irrigate rice paddies during the dry seasons (January to May) helped Bangladesh become food self-sufficient by the 1990s, which was no small feat for one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Researchers proposed that lowering of the groundwater table as a result of intensive irrigation practices in the dry season created conditions for recharge from monsoon rains (June to September), which then replenishes the groundwater (1). On page 1315 of this issue, Shamsudduha et al. (2) present a quantitative analysis of this depletion-replenish process and show that this recharge has indeed been happening at a large scale, in a process they call the Bengal Water Machine (BWM).
 
Date 2022-09-16
2022-09-21T02:41:35Z
2022-09-21T02:41:35Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Mukherji, Aditi. 2022. The “water machine” of Bengal: a data-driven and policy-supported strategic use of aquifers for irrigation is needed to maximize their benefits. Science, 377(6612):1258-1259. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade0393]
1095-9203
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/121912
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade0393
H051429
 
Language en
 
Rights Copyrighted; all rights reserved
Limited Access
 
Format 1258-1259
 
Publisher American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
 
Source Science