Water Footprint Network: What is a water footprint?

Water Footprint Network: What is a water footprint?

This subject does not directly apply to my Final Project, but is a concept I like learning about and is in my wheelhouse. My undergraduate study is in water resource management (hydrology) and I was introduced to this concept of “virtual water” or “water footprint” as a way of understanding how precious our water resources are. The earth is a planet almost overflowing with water, but has a limited amount of freshwater. Only 2.5 percent of the world’s water is fresh and only 1 percent of that is available (not tied up in glaciers). We consume exuberant amounts of water without even knowing it and tie up some of that 1 percent available in goods and services.

Population growth, rapid increases in food production and energy consumption have changed land use and its hydrology forever. Scarcity of water and pollution plague many regions of the world. The water footprint is a measurement of how the world’s freshwater is disbursed and polluted. The consumption of this water happens directly by drinking it from the faucet or indirectly from eating an apple, producing goods or providing services we use daily, such as electricity. It is broken down into three components: blue, green, and grey.

The blue water footprint is the amount of groundwater and surface water required to make a product (evaporated or used directly) such as irrigated agriculture or domestic water use. The green water footprint is the amount of precipitation stored in the root zone of the soil and evaporated transpiration and incorporated by the plants (water cycle). Grey water is the amount of freshwater needed to mix and dilute pollutants enough to maintain water quality standards. The water footprint concept gives everyone a frame of reference on how we can be more efficient with our water use. The data I will show today is the National Consumption and National Production uses by the world for industry and agriculture. So, the next time you have a cheeseburger, fries and a diet coke think about how much blue, green and grey water was consumed to produce that meal before you even ate it and how someone in Africa might would have liked to have had access to that water.

Website and Dataset Reference: http://waterfootprint.org/en/

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