CONCOURSE > RESEARCH
NOT A DROP TO DRINK RESEARCH BY AN AUBURN University assistant professor suggests that more than half of the global land area could experience water scarcity by the end of the 21st century. Shufen “Susan” Pan, of Auburn’s International Center for Climate and Global Change Research and the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, found that in low and high climate-change scenarios, global warming would result in a large increase of surface evapotranspiration at the end of the 21st century, a measure of the amount of water lost from the land surface.
“One billion people lack reliable access to safe drinking water, two to three million children die each year from water-related diseases and 171 million children are suffering from chronic malnutrition,” she said. These numbers are not only numbers to Pan, and she speaks passionately about the devastation vulnerable populations sum of evaporation & plant transpiration from the Earth's surface to the atmosphere could experience when changing climate Pan and her team found that the ratio of evapotranspiration to precipitation would greatly intensifies already stressed water increase across about 60 percent of the global land area. The ratio of evapotranspiration and food sources. However, she to precipitation is a measure for the potential evaporative demand—in the simplest terms, believes pursuing solutions to potential water scarcity. one problem at a time will prove “Regions like Africa would face the largest increase in evapotranspiration, a problem insufficient. compounded in this area, for example, where at least 44 percent of the population already “These problems must be lacks access to clean, reliable water sources,” Pan said. considered as they relate to Her research, published in Earth’s Future, is part of a broader focus on the nexus of each other, or they will prove interdependency between water, food, energy and changing climate. Pan is interested in the unmanageable,” said Pan, ways that water, food and energy security are interdependent with multiple ways of mutual who admits that it’s a tough influence, and how those three factors in turn hinge on climate. problem. “One person cannot solve “Both energy and food production depend on readily available water, which requires energy this issue.” in turn for purification and transport, but is also affected by pollution from both energy and But what she can do is provide food production,” she said. science-based information for For Pan, who has a broad interdisciplinary background including ecology, economics and mitigation and adaptation related geographic information systems, this research means a lot to her personally. She says that the especially to food and water information available on how many people in the world are already suffering from water and security. food insecurity is distressing to her, and the indications are that it will only get worse.
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