PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Thirsty crops and hungry people: Symposium to examine realities of water security

2013-02-17
(Press-News.org) You may have guzzled a half-liter bottle of water at lunchtime, but your food and clothes drank a lot more. The same half-liter that quenched your thirst also produces only about one square-inch of bread or one square-inch of cotton cloth.

Agriculture is in fact one of the world's most insatiable consumers of water. And yet it's facing growing competition for water from cities, industry, and recreation at a time when demand for food is rising, and water is expected to become increasingly scarce. Take irrigation, for example, says Fred Vocasek, senior lab agronomist with the nation's largest crop consulting firm, Servi-Tech, Inc., in Dodge City, KS.

"Irrigation withdrawals in the United States have stabilized since about 1980, but food consumption trends are following the upward population trend," he says. "In other words, we have an increasingly hungry world with stable, or limited, freshwater supplies for food production. So, how do we keep pace with the widening gap?"

That's the central question behind the symposium, "Green Dreams, Blue Waves, and Shades of Gray: The Reality of Water," being held Sunday, Feb. 17 from 8:30-11:30 am at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Boston, MA.

The principal answers, say the symposium speakers, lie in three areas: Protecting our limited stores of freshwater in lakes, streams, and the ground (blue water); optimizing the use of water in crop production (green water); and reusing "waste" water (gray water) that has already served some purpose, such as food processing or energy production.

But those answers also raise a host of additional questions, says Vocasek, who co-organized the session with John Sadler of the USDA-Agricultural Research Service. Who gets the water from an aquifer when farmers want it for irrigation, a gas company wants to pump it for fracking, or a city hopes to water a new golf course? How do we convince producers to adopt water-conserving technologies and practices when it's not in their economic interest to do so? Why can't farmers simply irrigate less?

The last question is especially complex because of the issue of "virtual" water—the hidden water in food that went into growing it, Vocasek says. If the United States, for instance, decides to conserve water in the Ogallala Aquifer by growing less corn and importing grain from China instead, it's still consuming the virtual water that grew the Chinese corn. And because Chinese farmers use water much less efficiently than U.S. producers, by "trying to save water here, we may actually be wasting water on a global scale," he says.

To portray the full extent of this complicated issue, "The Reality of Water" will begin with three talks on the three types of water—blue, green, and gray—and how they can be best used to ensure both adequate food and abundant water supplies for future generations. After those speakers "paint the picture," Vocasek says, "the next three panelists will put the frame around that picture. Because there are limitations due to economics, there are limitations due to legal and ownership issues. And there are limitations due to day-to-day operations."

For example, restricting water use in certain situations or regions can be a useful approach. But government agencies often can't require landowners to cut consumption, because water rights—the right to divert water for specific purposes—are property rights in the United States. Reusing gray water to irrigate crops can also be tricky, because wastewater often carries salts or other contaminants that can damage the soil over time.

Yet another constraint is the large size of the average farm today, which often makes it unattractive for farmers to implement practices, such as cover crops and multi-year crop rotations, that help store water in the soil but take extra time and labor. "You can have a lot of plans," Vocasek says, "but there are practicalities that we deal with, as well."

This is why the symposium includes not only the perspectives of researchers and professors, but also crop consultants and professional agronomists who are "toe-to-toe" with the farmer, Vocasek adds.

"The theory, the research, the data are important, but you've got to have someone to help put it all together, because it can't be done from a university or federal office," he says. "It's got to be done right there on the tractor seat."

### "Green Dreams, Blue Waves, and Shades of Gray: The Reality of Water" is sponsored by the American Society of Agronomy's Water Security for Agriculture Task Force (chaired by Vocasek), and will be moderated by Ohio State University soil science professor, Rattan Lal. Read more at http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2013/webprogram/Session5662.html

Additional media contacts: Rattan Lal; lal.1@osu.edu; 614-301-4873 Madeline Fisher; mfisher@sciencesocieties.org; 608-238-3973; 608-320-1584


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Get your brain fit

2013-02-17
PRESENTATION TITLE: A Vision for Excelling in Mental Health and Well-Being We all know the importance of keeping healthy and are familiar with the refrains of 'exercise more', 'eat better' and 'get regular physicals'. But what about our mental health? Professor Barbara Sahakian, best known for her expertise on cognitive enhancers, challenges society (and government) to prioritise mental health in the same way as we do physical health. "As a society, we take our mental health for granted," said Prof Sahakian. "But just like our bodies, it is important to keep our brains ...

Media advisory: AAAS session addresses infrastructure design in a changing climate

2013-02-17
DURHAM, N.H. – As our climate changes, the way we engineer our cities must, too. That's the message that University of New Hampshire professor Paul Kirshen, an author of a recent report that assessed Boston's vulnerability to coastal flooding, will deliver at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting February 14-18, 2013, in Boston. Kirshen will speak about water infrastructure management under a changing climate at the "Effective Science for Community Adaptation to Climate Change" session Sunday morning, Feb. 17 (8:30 – 11:30 a.m., ...

Forging a new periodic table using nanostructures

2013-02-17
Northwestern University's Chad A. Mirkin, a world-renowned leader in nanotechnology research and its application, has developed a completely new set of building blocks that is based on nanoparticles and DNA. Using these tools, scientists will be able to build -- from the bottom up, just as nature does -- new and useful structures. Mirkin will discuss his research in a session titled "Nucleic Acid-Modified Nanostructures as Programmable Atom Equivalents: Forging a New Periodic Table" at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston. ...

US science policy should focus on outcomes not efficiencies, says ASU professor

2013-02-17
BOSTON – Given the huge investment and power of science and technology in the U.S. it is surprising that more attention isn't paid to the policy decisions that drive the enterprise, said Daniel Sarewitz, co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University. What appears to be missing from the equation, he added, is a focus on outcomes. Sarewitz was speaking at the 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston. "Given the power of science and technology to shape and even transform ...

ASU professor sees Rachel Carson's early careers as a model for today's science journalism crisis

2013-02-17
BOSTON – It has been more than 50 years since Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking book Silent Spring. Regarded as a hero by some and a villain by others, Carson helped revolutionize the way the public views environmental science. One area of Carson's career that is often overlooked is her time as a government employee. This is where she got her true start in journalism and it is the area G. Pascal Zachary, professor of practice with the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, will be discussing at the 2013 American Association ...

Key to cleaner environment may be right beneath our feet

2013-02-17
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- While many people recognize that clean water and air are signs of a healthy ecosystem, most do not realize that a critical part of the environment is right beneath their feet, according to a Penn State hydrologist. The ground plays an important role in maintaining a clean environment by serving as a natural water filtration and purification system, said Henry Lin, professor of hydropedology and soil hydrology. Understanding the components that make up this integral part of the ecosystem can lead to better groundwater management and smarter environmental ...

Evidence shows concussions require long-term follow-up for players

2013-02-17
February 17, 2013 – Boston, MA - As the National Football League braces for lawsuits by 4000 former players alleging the league failed to protect them from the long-term consequences of concussions, game-changing research by a leading Canadian researcher shows damage to the brain can persist for decades after the original head trauma. "Even when you are symptom-free, your brain may still not be back to normal," says Dr. Maryse Lassonde, a neuropsychologist and the scientific director of the Quebec Nature and Technologies Granting Agency. Lassonde, whose work is supported ...

ArcticNet recommends practical solutions to improve standard of living in Canada's north

2013-02-17
February 17, 2013 - Boston, MA – Northern communities are in the midst of a period of intense and rapid change brought on by modernization, industrialization and the realities of climate change. From preserving the means to hunt caribou to protecting stocks of arctic char - balancing development with a respect and preservation of traditional means of sustainability may be key to improving standards of living in the North. With the help of the icebreaker Amundsen, Louis Fortier, Canada Research Chair on the Response of Arctic Marine Ecosystems to Climate Change and other ...

Canada's top water expert brings lessons on water resource management to AAAS

2013-02-17
February 17, 2013 — Boston, MA — With nearly 20 percent of the United States experiencing an extreme drought, the damage from Hurricane Sandy estimated at $65 billion and farmers in Canada's Prairies struggling with the effects of 2011's devastating flooding, the importance of water security in North America is impossible to overstate. At the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, director Howard Wheater and his team use the Saskatchewan River Basin as a large-scale case study to generate the science underpinning the policies and practices ...

Brain prostheses create a sense of touch

2013-02-17
BOSTON, MA -- Rats can't usually see infrared light, but they have "touched" it in a Duke University lab. The rats sensed the light as a sensation of touch after Duke neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis and his team fitted the animals with an infrared detector wired to electrodes implanted in the part of the mammalian brain that processes information related to the sense of touch. One of the main flaws of current human, brain-controlled prosthetics is that patients cannot sense the texture of what they touch, Nicolelis said. His goal is to give quadriplegics not only the ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Are lifetimes of big appliances really shrinking?

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

[Press-News.org] Thirsty crops and hungry people: Symposium to examine realities of water security