science
Many farming regions face a slow-building crisis as groundwater is pumped from underground stores faster than rain can refill them, threatening the farms that feed millions.
Aquifers are the underground water-bearing layers described. These are porous layers of rock, sand, or gravel that store groundwater, and farmers in many regions pump from them to irrigate crops, but when withdrawal outpaces the slow natural process of rainfall seeping back down to refill the layer, the water level in the aquifer steadily drops, threatening the long-term supply that agriculture in that region depends on.
Glaciers are frozen masses of ice found at high altitudes or latitudes, an entirely different kind of water reservoir, and estuaries are coastal zones where rivers meet the sea; neither term refers to underground layers of water-bearing rock.
Excessive pumping from an aquifer can cause the ground above it to physically sink, a process called subsidence, which can permanently reduce how much water the aquifer is able to hold even if it is later replenished, making some aquifer depletion effectively irreversible.
science
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