(NOTE, this newsletter was originally sent on February 10th 2024, via a brief stint using the Mailerlite software which I ended up hating. It is being reposted for completeness of the Gnamma archive.)
Newsletter title nomenclature credit goes to my friend N.Z.
Amidst the ongoing death and desecration in Gaza, it's a hydrologist's nightmare to learn that Israel is flooding subterannean tunnels with seawater, ostensibly in attempt to flush Hamas out of them. Introduction of salt into the subsurface soils and waters will lead to decades, if not centuries, of difficulty soil health and the use of subsurface water (aquifer water) for drinking or agriculture.
Soil salinization is a normal but complex and worsening problem globally. Salts exist throughout a lot of our landscapes, and they tend to accumulate in dry regions where the water evaporates. These problems are often worsened by irrigation and groundwater manipulation, ultimately leading to a change in vegetation (and loss of agricultural capacity). I was taught about the problem by a native of Perth, part of a region that is particularly affected by salinization, and they spoke about it as a life-or-death topic for the relationship between the landscape and people of Western Australia.
Manipulation of water supply is nothing new in warfare and Israel has been abusing it for months (actually, years). And military bodies are known to be some of the most polluting entities on earth. But the environmental destruction of this particular action, pumping these tunnels full of sea water, is somewhat unprecedented. Never before have I heard of aquifer waters being the victim of wartime tactics. The closest analogy is perhaps the draining of the Mesopotamian marshes which led to vast social and ecological destruction, though this was performed over decades and was still a surficial body of water.
It is worth noting that, until fairly recently, it was really difficult to get a decent sense of how aquifers behave as 3D entities. We've probed aquifers with wells for millennia, but hydrogeology really exploded once computer models allowed researchers and water managers to more clearly conceptualize aquifers in all their complexities. When the U.S. Geological Survey remade their official water cycle diagram in 2022, they cited that groundwater bodies of water were often omitted from teachings about water in previous decades, something I attribute to the more recent growth of the field. A map of aquifers across the globe published in 2008 was described by New Scientist as being the "first time" they were all made visible.
As 21st-century technology brings increasing legibility to aquifers, our most hidden (and mysterious?) bodies of water, I am less certain to say more conflict will be avoided by their legibility (as New Scientist does): it will also create risks, positioning aquifers as new targets in ongoing and yet-to-come water wars. Because aquifers are slow-to-change and difficult-to-reach, real-world impacts on them will be extremely difficult and expensive to reverse at-scale. If the ultimate goal is a land grab, saltwater flooding is self-destructive, as the aquifer damage is likely to outlast the nation states attempting to use such methods as levers for war and geopolitical gain.
No chummy sign off on this one. I think it is inexcusable.
Lukas