Notes VI

Heat Wave in the Indus Valley, June 2007

Source NASA Earth Observatory

When I began preparing materials for use with the course on World Water Resources in the autumn, I copied a NASA space photograph of the Indus Valley (not the one above), encompassing Pakistan and large portions of its neighbors India and Afghanistan. Of necessity, India and especially Pakistan will be central topics in the course, but I did not anticipate the catastrophic flooding that has accompanied the summer monsoonal rains of 2010. Control of the waters of the Indus is one of the longest activities of civilization, for the residents of  Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa, civilizations which flourished almost 5,000 years ago, used the Indus to irrigate their fields and feared its droughts and floods. The current flooding is but one season in an almost constant effort of people to make a livelihood from a beautiful but punishing environment.

Sumer Flooding in the Indus Valley, 3 August 2010

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Meanwhile, rains have cooled Moscow somewhat, but peat fires remain a problem. This morning's New York Times has a good piece on peat fires. Along with an explanation of why those fires are so smoky, it also examines how a decision some years ago to drain bogs and mine the peat to use as fuel in electrical generating plants is partially to blame for the smoky fires, dangerous to health, of the extraordinarily hot summer of 2010.

Near the Potomac River, in Loudon County, VA a few kilometers northwest of the Fairfax County boundary, the real estate speculator Donald Trump is redeveloping a golf course. Today's Washington Post reported on the massive tree clearance on that roughly 325 hectare site. The spokesperson for Trump was quoted as saying "The trees threatened the shoreline. Many of the trees, ... stress and eroding (sic) the soil." I guess those trees are like the forest trees claimed by other public relations flacks to create air pollution and acid rain. Loudon County, and its neighbor Fairfax County should encourage widespread cutting of trees, deforestation, in order to protect the environment!

Floods in Pakistan

4 August  2010

3 August 2009

 Flooding in North-Central Pakistan

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Last week I published a brief posting on the weather extremes of 2010 and mentioned the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan. A couple of days ago one of my absolute favorite websites NASA Earth Observatory, from NASA Goddard Space Laboratory,  published a photograph of 2010 flood conditions in north-central Pakistan with a comparison to a more normal monsoonal wet season in 2009. Large areas of green are visible on both photos, the growing vegetation associated with the wet part of the monsoon as summer rains break the months-long winter dry spell.  The year 2009 was within normal rainfall expectations. There was some flooding of low lying areas, flooding anticipated annually, shown by the blue areas on the photographs. The difference in the amount of blue on the two photos gives an indication of the widespread flooding that has occurred as much heavier than normal monsoonal rain has fallen in the current rainy season.

The pulse of water from the rains is now pushing southward through the agricultural heartland of Pakistan toward Sindh. With advance warning, the loss of life in the south is likely to be small, but damage to roads, rail lines, towns and farms is inevitable. For presumably unrelated reasons the southern city of Karachi has recently suffered serious rioting. Economic displacements and flood refugees could make conditions in the already socially unstable city even more chaotic and difficult to control. 

Pakistan and India depend on monsoonal rains, the seasonal rainfall of mid and late summer, for virtually all of their rain-fed agriculture and much of the flow of major exotic rivers like the Indus and the Ganges. Years when monsoonal rains fail to arrive can portend great problems including the possibility of famine. A bitter irony is that excess rainfall can also cause great problems with many hundreds dead and vast damages to the agriculture and the economy. The current floods mark the second time in three years that excess rainfall has flooded large areas in Pakistan, for 2008 was also a year of flooding in the Indus Valley.

For anyone with an interest in the issue of flooding and drought in India and Pakistan, or water issues more generally, the NASA Earth Observatory site is strongly recommended both for its stunning photography (and mapping) from space data and also for its simple and clear explanations of the phenomena shown in the photographs. The current photograph of the day shows a failure of the Tempe, AZ town drain, a way of removing excess water in the occasional monsoonal flooding in the Arizona desert slurb. The southwestern United States and adjacent portions of México share with southern Asia a monsoonal climate!

Related articles by Zemanta

• More rain threatens to worsen Pakistan floods (cnn.com)
• Rain adds to Pakistan flood woes (bbc.co.uk)
• Pakistan's flooding pushes south (bbc.co.uk)

Some Publications on Water Issues

Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas at  lower edge of the photo, 2008

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Over the past week I have encountered two newspaper pieces, a book and three online journals worth noting:

1. China, Tibet, and Asia's Rivers. An op-ed piece in the right-wing Washington Post last Monday gives a fascinating spin on Tibet as the water tower of Asia (in a manner even more dramatic than the Massif Central, is called the water tower of France). Most of southern Asia's major rivers have their origins in Chinese controlled Tibet, and China could claim much of that water for its own use. Should large scale diversions of Tibetian water for use in arid Northern China take place, then downstream users in nations including nuclear armed India and Pakistan could suffer great harm. The op ed piece was written by a researcher at the Indian Institute for Defense Studies and gives a hint of India's take on the issue.

2. Colorado River and Boulder Dam: A book review by the historian of California Kevin Starr in today's Washington Post Book World praises a new book on the construction of Boulder (Hoover) Dam and the evolution of water policy in the lower Colorado River basin. Starr's review is worth a read, and I am looking forward to reading the book itself in the near future. The book is Hiltzik, Michael. 2010. Colossus: On the Building of the Hoover Dam. Free Press ISBN 978146532163.

3.Water as a subject has led to a huge number of publications, including many journals. In addition articles on water topics are widespread in journals in fields as disparate as medicine, geography, environmental economics, civil engineering, and architecture. No single individual could possible hope to keep up with all of the literature. The task is especially difficult for interested laypersons. Much of the journal literature is couched in what seems to be impenetrable jargon, and if the field is engineering or economics the articles tend to be salted with complicated equations. That said, a few journals are written in an accessible way, and recently I have discovered two worth mentioning:

Water Alternatives  describes itself as an interdisciplinary journal on water, politics and development and its current issue examines the topic of large dams, like Boulder Dam, a major topic as several immense dams have recently been completed or are on the drawing boards including the Three Gorges Dam in China, which will be the world's largest when completed.

Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education published by the Universities Council on Water Resources covers water topics from many perspectives and is readable by any intelligent adult. It may be necessary to have a subscription for the most recent issues, but older issues are available gratis online. As it happens, the lead article in the most recent issue is about drought and water supply on the Colorado River!

Also online is the journal Water, somewhat more technical but worthwhile for those with a serious interest and some scientific background.

International Water Wars?

Indus Valley, Source: NASA Earth Observatory

A potential for water war between India and Pakistan has long been feared by outside observers. An article in today's right-wing Washington Post suggests that possibility is growing greater. The partition of the Raj in the waning hours of British control creating the predominantly Muslim Pakistan and the mostly Hindu India (though India also has a huge Muslim population making it one of the largest Muslim nations) is usually discussed in religious terms. In the bloody aftermath of the partition, Kashmir with a largely Muslim population, remained a major point of contention between the two mostly unfriendly states with Hindu India controlling the crucial eastern section. There have been almost ceaseless and frequently bloody confrontations between Hindus and Muslims and between India and Pakistan, with China later added to the toxic mix, but more frequently than not, the conflict has been discussed in religious and political terms.

In fact the conflict is also over water, for India and China control the crucial headwaters where the Indus River gets the bulk of its flow from melting snowfall and glaciers in the Himalaya. The Indus is a classic example of what the geographer Edward Ullman many years ago termed an exotic river, a stream that after gathering significant flow in a humid zone passes for much of its length through arid areas where rates of evaporation exceed rainfall and little if any water is added to the flow. In the arid zone the river becomes the major, if not the only, source of water and allows human occupation.

One of the oldest areas of agriculture and urban settlement on earth, the Indus Valley, now largely contained within Pakistan, has an almost total dependence on the flow of the Indus. The larger towns and cities use river water for urban and industrial purposes, and agriculture would be impossible were not for withdrawals of Indus water. The critical headwaters, most of the primary sources of the Indus's flow, are controlled by India (and to a much smaller extent by China). India has the ability, and the facilities, to cut off the flow into Pakistan. There is ample demand for the water within India, for its western portions are nearly as dry as most of Pakistan.

A water blockade with most or all of the flows cut off by India would in very short order lead to a collapse of agriculture in Pakistan and intense privation. It could also lead to open warfare between the nuclear armed states. More on this in later postings.