"We are basically drying out the Great Plains," according to Kurt Fausch, professor emeritus at Colorado State University. Fausch has studied the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, which supports about a sixth of the world's grain crops. Fausch tells Colorado Matters that streams and rivers that depend on the Ogallala are drying out, too, due to half a century of over-pumping from the aquifer.
In research published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Fausch, who's a stream ecologist, and his colleagues write that the depletions are leading to fish extinctions and threatening agriculture in Eastern Colorado and other states from South Dakota to northern Texas.
