Drought intensifies across Thailand

[marko kok prong]

Before i left for the Philippines,i noted Wichianburi had 0.1 mm of rain since jan1,in fact,the last rain we did have was mid november, i have been there 4 years and always before we had thunderstorms in march/april with some heavy falls,this year and last year nothing,i checked the temps there on the met site, over or around 40c,for the last few days,this has been the story since the start of march,with about 3 days respite when it dropped to about 36c. My freind has been here 10 years+ and has had huge cracks open up in his dead lawn,he has never seen this he tells me. Before i left i noted the countryside was the driest i had ever seen it,many trees are in distress,tree's that normally have leaves this time of year have none,it looks more like parts of Rajahastan at present than Thailand.

[donnybay]

Just wait, this is only the beginning of the problems.

As in the original post, the big problem that a lot of people do not realise is the problem of saline.

As the water table keeps dropping the saline concentration increases to the point where wells and bore holes become useless, if salt contamination gets into the farm lands then the land can be barren for more than 10 years!

I really do not think the Government has given any of this the serious thought that it deserves, but then again, they are just poor farmers anyway right? Who needs them.

Agreed, in Phrae, the salination of the ground water is starting to become a real problem....I'm not sure of the percentage of solids in the aquifer but it must be pretty high. for the first time the ground water has quite a briney taste and it leaves salt crystals on glass and concrete!

And I'm only a kilometer from the Yom river....I believe it's the source of the aquifer?

I'm not a geologist, but I'm curious enough to actually do some research, and with many years of working in the water industry I can tell you that rivers don't feed aquifers.

Rainfall is dispersed by being absorbed by the ground (filling aquifers), by run off (surface drain off to rivers) or evaporation (going back where it came from).

Run off is the biggest problem, exacerbated by man's interference, mainly deforestation, but building on land denies rain access to the ground, then the rain or channelled quickly to streams and rivers. We as a species create our own problems.

As for salutation, that will only be a problem where salt deposits are found. Isaan, in it's distant past, appears to have once been seabed, the salt content of the soil is quite high. As someone pointed out, you don't see any earthworms around here.

The salts are evident in the water at low concentrations, but that's attributable to the relatively shallow borehole.

Droitwich Spa in Worcestershire, UK, is famous for it's brine source, saltier than the dead sea, yet that doesn't affect the local water supply, with boreholes at Westwood and Sugabrook pumping stations a few miles away.

The geological strata changes from level to level, so it's entirely possible to avoid salinity.

As you are knowledgeable in the subject, what is your take on golf courses, bearing in mind they use millions of gallons daily/weekly. It must come from somewhere?