Nature Communications (Jun 2018)

Overpumping leads to California groundwater arsenic threat

  • Ryan Smith,
  • Rosemary Knight,
  • Scott Fendorf

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04475-3
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 6

Abstract

Read online

Groundwater resources are coming under increasing pressure leading to water quality loss. Here, the authors find that recent groundwater pumping has led to increasing arsenic concentrations in the San Joaquin Valley, California aquifers from arsenic residing in the pore water of clay strata released by overpumping.