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Mexico Is Experiencing One of The Most Widespread And Intense Droughts In Decades: NASA
According to the space agency, 85% of the territory is facing these conditions, which has affected the drinking water resources for drinking, cultivating, and irrigating. "Dams throughout Mexico are at exceptionally low levels."
As of April 15, 85% of the country was facing these conditions, explained the space agency.
ENTREPRENEUR STAFF
May 11, 2021
This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process.
NASA published a statement in which it explains the drought situation in Mexico and ensures that the country is experiencing one of the most widespread and intense in decades.
According to the space agency, 85% of the territory is facing these conditions, which has affected the drinking water resources for drinking, cultivating, and irrigating. "Dams throughout Mexico are at exceptionally low levels."
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In this report, NASA shows images of the levels of the Villa Victoria dam, one of the main water supplies in Mexico City, one taken on March 27, 2020, and another on March 30, 2021, and exposes:
March 27, 2020. Photo via NASA.
March 30, 2021. Photo via NASA.
“The most recent images, although more cloudy, show that the water levels have continued to decrease. Villa Victoria is at approximately a third of its normal capacity ”.
Mexican dams at their lowest levels
According to what was exposed by the space agency, 60 large dams located in the north and center of the Aztec country are below 25% of their capacity. This has caused some government administrators to regulate the flow of the liquid from the reservoirs so that some inhabitants have been left without running water.
On the other hand, in the following map NASA shows the areas in which the vegetation is most stressed due to drought, through data on the Evaporative Stress Index (ESI, for its acronym in English).
Photo via NASA.
The ESI indicates how the evapotranspiration rate, water evaporates from the earth's surface and from plant leaves, is compared to normal conditions. The space agency explains that the negative values are below normal rates, which is why plants are stressed due to inadequate soil moisture.
No rain
From October 1, 2020, to April 18, 2021, the National Meteorological Service of Mexico said that the country had about 20% less rainfall than normal. He also explained that the northeast of the territory has gone from severe drought to an extreme one.
The report also adds that in the wet months of last year, little rainfall was also received due to the La Niña phenomenon, in which cold water from the Pacific Ocean inhibits the formation of rain clouds over Mexico and the southern United States.
“Mexico is approaching one of the worst widespread droughts on record. In 2011, drought conditions covered 95 percent of the country and caused famines in the state of Chihuahua. In 1996, the country experienced the worst drought on record and suffered huge crop losses, ”concludes NASA.
Lead Photo: Image credit: Depositphotos.com
PODCAST: Vertical Farming Podcast - Season 3 Episode 29 - Nicholas Dyner. Nick Is The CEO of Moleaer
In this episode, Harry and Nick discuss Nick’s extensive background working in the water treatment industry
Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show Nicholas Dyner. Nick is the CEO of Moleaer, an organization that produces commercial nanobubble generators to deliver sustainable, chemical-free water quality improvement for agriculture, reservoirs, lakes, ponds, and more.
In this episode, Harry and Nick discuss Nick’s extensive background working in the water treatment industry. Nick expounds on nanobubble technology, what it is and how it can be used to improve vertical farming and the agricultural industry as a whole. Finally, Harry and Nick talk about the ongoing struggle for universal access to safe water and how advancements in technology can help restore and improve the quality of sea life.
Listen & Subscribe
Preventing Diseases Coming Into Your Fresh Produce
“If people don’t make the investment to understand water quality, once they realize the damage to their produce, it might be too late
Sankaran:
“The first thing is to understand the controlling factors. How do you make sure of the soil and the water quality health. Our job is the water quality.” Outside of heavy metals, some micro-nutrients are toxic to plants in moderate concentrations or specific conditions. KETOS looks at water quality as the first aspect in food safety because elements or toxins in water are often filtered and held by soil.
“If people don’t make the investment to understand water quality, once they realize the damage to their produce, it might be too late. One of the most common things, which we haven’t measured yet but actively looking into it, is how we can understand e-coli. We always end up having e-coli outbreaks and product recalls because of e-coli. We need to get ahead of that because there’s millions of dollars of losses and food waste.”
Safety issues
Kris Nightengale, VP Agricultural Sales notes: “If you look at the US data regarding food safety issues and over 80% of the cases had livestock grazing in proximity or higher in the watershed in relation to the produce field. Indoor and vertical agriculture seeks to solve the problem by taking the food out of the open and into a highly controlled enclosed environment.” Some pathogens are known to translocate in plants and become a part of the cell structure. This means that no amount of washing is going to disinfect the produce.
The KETOS shield continuously monitors the pH, ORP, and chlorine, which ensures chlorine can be maintained at the proper level to ensure effective sanitization. Even though indoor production facilities go to great lengths to filter and treat influent and circulating water, pathogens can still be introduced through fertilizer, worker, and pests.
“Healthy plants are not the hosts for pathogens that unhealthy plants are. Because indoor production works on a circulating loop system, nutrient imbalances can move very quickly through a facility. It’s not uncommon for indoor growers to watch a perfectly healthy crop start exhibiting symptoms of changing vigor in a matter of hours. Water tests are generally infrequent and there is a significant lag time from the lab. KETOS is filling in the massive data gap that growers can directly and immediately tie to crop health”, Nightengale affirms.
Keeping the water nutritious
One of the biggest issues that the US is dealing with right now, not necessarily how good the water treatment plants are, but how good the piping across the distribution network. Those pipes could have been laid out 100 years ago and could be contaminated with toxins. Knowing the water quality, both at the source and the destination is very important.
“KETOS is deploying systems to help with irrigation as well as help implement a broader distribution network for leak detection, understanding lead contamination in pipes, so that repairs can be conducted proactively vs. an expensive infrastructure replacement”, Sankaran says. “You cannot act upon what you don’t measure.”
“Agriculture has successfully implemented technology across many facets of its operations and its time for water management to be a more important discussion as this is a precious asset that can impact not just the farmers but of all of the consumers at large .”
Nightengale adds: “KETOS is able to address the gaps in the marketplace today for water intelligence in-depth, and the right kind of data can provide you insights for what’s actually occurring at your fingertips.”
For more information:
KETOS
Meena Sankaran, Founder, and CEO
meena@KETOS.co
Kris Nightengale
kris.nightengale@KETOS.co
www.KETOS.co
Publication date: Tue 15 Sep 2020
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
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