The Ogallala Is Drying Up
By Emerson Welsh
Info on Water
There are a lot of important resources that all life need to survive, and water, is the most important one of all. From images and other research done by people, you can tell that Earth has a massive percentage of water on it. But, a lot of that water is mostly saltwater, and that is not ok for people to drink. It has too much salt in it for people to drink, it can be harmful or even deadly. There is a lot of saltwater, but the freshwater supply on Earth is very little standing at 2% freshwater. Most of this water is frozen in ice caps and glaciers, and out of that 2%, 1% of that is out of reach to humans. The freshwater is mostly used to feed the world population. Smaller amounts of this water is used for household needs and industrial workings and processes. The amount of freshwater is going down so fast because the worlds population is increasing faster than the water can regenerate. The more people that come to Earth, the demands for water went up, and more water has to be used. The Earth does not have an unlimited amount of freshwater. Many other sources that Earth used to have dried up because of overuse. Also, water is being wasted because of leaking faucets. Our water is also being polluted by human waste and other chemicals that harm water. And, in some places, this pollution can cause death. Burning fossil fuels will have a major effect on the environment and the water. The chemicals released into the water can cause global warming which causes bad weather events. Also, in certain places, this global warming is causing droughts, which lead to animal and human death. Countries are now beginning to fight over water rights. Water is a basic necessity for all life on Earth, and if all this continues, what will life be like later in the future.
Water is the most important resource for life.
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The image above shows where most of the drought is located in the mid-west. A lot of this is in the middle of these states shown. The darker the red/yellow the color gets, the bigger the drought and vice versa.
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The Ogallala is Being overused and drained
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The image above shows where the ogallala is spread out across the states. Most of it is in Nebraska, but most of the drought is in Texas.