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water from the Yangtze basin to the parched north (Science, 25 August 2006, p. 1034). But that remedy is no longer deemed sufficient. "Faced with an escalating crisis, the government is calling for stepped-up monitoring and scientific advice on groundwater management," says Liu. This year, the Ministry of Science and Technology launched a $4.4 million, 5-year project to better understand China's subterranean water resources. The project "is the latest sign of the government's changing attitude," says Pang Zhonghe, a hydrogeologist at CAS's Institute of Geology and Geophysics here. An even bigger effort should get under way soon: a $250 million initiative to drill scientific observation wells to monitor groundwater levels and quality. China has largely brought its water problems on itself. The classic novel Outlaws of the Marsh, written more than 600 years ago, describes the reedy wetlands of the Haihe River Basin, NCP's northern section. The fertile region has been a major target of development; augmenting water drawn from rivers, NCP went from 1800 powered wells in the 1960s to more than 700,000 such wells by 2000, says Liu. The Water Rush paid big dividends, such as turning NCP into the country's wheat and corn belts, says Liang Shunlin, a geographer at the University of Maryland,

Water Shortages Loom as Northern China's Aquifers Are Sucked Dry
BEIJING--When Luo Yiqi visited the Inner

U .S . A S TR ONOM Y

Three years ago, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico was a telescope with a shining legacy and a dim future. An expert panel had just recommended that its chief supporter, the National Science Foundation (NSF), cut its funding sharply to make room for new astronomy projects. That step, the panel warned, could mean closing the facility--home to the world's largest radio telescope--in 2011 if it couldn't find other backers. Now, after much hand-wringing, NSF has decided to keep the observatory going until at least 2016 with help from the foundation's geosciences directorate and from NASA. The new funding partners will lead to more atmospheric science and asteroid tracking for the

radio telescope--and a new lease on life. "We're relieved that clos u r e i s o ff t h e t abl e," say s Donald Campbell, director of the National Astronomy and Stay tuned. Arecibo will keep monitoring the heavens. Ionosphere Center at Cornell University, which manages the observatory led to a Nobel Prize, and the first planets outon NSF's behalf. Under the new funding side the solar system. But in November 2006, ar rangement, he says, "there will be a more an outside panel led by astrophysicist Roger even mix of atmospheric science, asteroid Blandford of Stanford University declared tracking, and astronomy at the observatory that Arecibo was not as scientifically importhan in the past." tant as other NSF-funded telescopes (Science, Built in 1963, the 300-meter telescope 10 November 2006, p. 904). The review recmade possible storied discoveries such as ommended that the agency's astronomy dividetection of a binary pulsar system, which sion reduce its funding from $10.5 million in
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Mongolia region of northern China 3 years ago, he was in for a surprise. In recent years, overg razed g rasslands had withered and tur ned to deser t. Luo had been expecting that. But what stunned the ecologist from the University of Oklahoma, Norman, were the rice fields along a desiccated riverbed. Farmers were pumping water from deep aquifers to cultivate one of the thirstiest crops on the planet. "Apparently, farmers did not get enough scientific guidance," says Luo. O f a ll C hina 's e nvironm e nta l woe s , the biggest threat to livelihoods and food security may be looming water shor tages. C h ina 's f re s h wa te r r e s ourc e s a mount to 2220 cubic meters per person, just a quarter of the world average. For years, the central government focused on declining river flows and rising pollution, largely ignoring what has now become an acute problem: vanishing groundwater. "It was a question of `out of sight, out of mind,' " says environmen-

tal scientist Chen Jining, vice president of Tsinghua University here. The outlook is especially dire on the Nor th China Plain (NCP), an area encompassing six provinces and the Beijing and Tianjin metropolitan areas. Over the past 4 0 year s, NCP 's wat er t abl e h as f al l en steadily as some 120 billion cubic meters more water has been pumped from the land than the amount replaced by rainfall, says Liu Changming, a hydrologist at the Institute of Geographical Science and Natural Resource Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) here. Many wells are expected to run dry in the coming decades; when this happens, warns Lester Brown, president of the Ear th Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., "China will lose the ability to feed about 10% of its 1.3 billion people." Until recently, the government was banking on a massive engineering solution. The $75 billion South-to-North Water Diversion Project, now under construction, would bring


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College Park, and Beijing Normal University. Across the Haihe Basin, each year about 50% more shallow groundwater is consumed than recharged by rainfall. And the surfeit of wells is exhausting deeper phreatic water in the saturated zone that takes much longer to replenish. As NCP is sucked dr y, it is shriveling and fissuring, and subsidence now averages more than 1 meter. A few years ago, Liu's team, using radiocarbon dating, found to its astonishment that phreatic water now being drawn from NCP is as much as 30,000 years old. It would take that long, Liu says, to replenish the deep aquifer. To save water and maintain food security, researchers have proposed improved water conservation, better water pricing policies, and rational ag ricultural practices. Growing crops and raising livestock account for nearly 66% of China's total water consumption, Liu says. Water-saving measures in agriculture that could be implemented right away include drip and sprinkler ir rigation and no-till far ming, which reduces evaporation, says Xiao Xiangming, a landscape ecologist at the University of Oklahoma, Norman. Liang adds that researchers should strive to develop crops that lose less water to evaporation and better resist drought. The south-nor th diversion may provide

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sity. But any water from the diversion project should be viewed as a "supplementary" resource, Liu says: "The first step is to use local water efficiently." A comprehensive solution may depend on better information. Reliable data on aquifer storage, recharge, and water use are notoriously difficult to obtain, says Li Wenpeng, chief engineer at the China Institute of Geological Environmental Monitoring here. For a half-century, the government has relied heavily on data from nonstandardized farmers' wells. To address this shortcoming, the land and water ministries have devised a project, now in final review and expected to start this year, in which more than 20,000 monitoring wells would be drilled across the countr y, with a focus on northern regions. Each well would track water level, temperature, and water quality, and more than half would also test for pollutants and other contaminants. Remote sensing could augment this effort, Liang says. "It is time to take action," says Yuan Daoxian, a hydrogeologist at the Institute of Karst Geology in Guilin, China. Unless the government acts quickly to rein in groundwater consumption, Liu adds, "the problem will be impossible to solve." ­LI JIAO
Li Jiao is a writer in Beijing.

On hostile ground. An engineer surveys a fissure caused by overexploitation of groundwater in northern China's Hebei Province.

temporary relief when the central and eastern lines are completed in 2014. "We can store some of the transfer red water underground and take it when we need it," says Qian Yi, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering at Tsinghua Univer-

2006 to $4 million and that Arecibo be closed in 2011 if it could not find $4 million from other sources by that date. Its dire fate has been averted by NSF's own Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (AGS) and NASA, as well as by modifying the recommendations of the review panel. The new funding plan was unveiled in a 29 April solicitation for proposals to manage the observatory after Cornell's contract ends next year. The solicitation (NSF 10-562) describes how AGS will increase its annual contribution to Arecibo from $2.3 million to $3 million in 2011 and reaching $4 million by 2015. Support from the astronomy division will drop from $8 million in 2010 to $6 million in 2011 and, eventually, to $4 million in 2015. NASA, which stopped contributing to the observatory in 2003, will chip in $2 million a year starting this fall. Blandford says he's glad that NSF has found a way "to keep a fine facility going." He

says the funding levels spelled out in NSF's solicitation seem to be "roughly following the spirit of our recommendations." Maybe so, says Campbell, but the observatory traveled a bumpy road to get there. "We went through a 20% staff reduction after the review," says Campbell. "Now the staff is overworked, definitely overextended, and we'll be struggling mightily to maintain our research programs." The observatory received $3.1 million last year as part of the massive federal stimulus funding package, which helped to ease its pain, and the Puerto Rican government floated a $3 million bond to pay for needed maintenance. But scientists remain skittish. "Some of the astronomers are worried that our jobs could be on the line," says one researcher who did not wish to be named. "There is still uncertainty." The lifelines thrown by NASA and AGS could raise the profile of atmospheric studies and asteroid-detection efforts at the observaSCIENCE VOL 328

tory, presumably at some cost to astronomical observations. A NASA press release says the agency expects Arecibo to allocate "at least 500 hours per year of telescope operations for planetary radar research supported by NASA, and at least 300 hours of that dedicated to near-Earth objects [NEO] research." Last year's lineup devoted 300 hours to planetary radar, including 170 hours for NEOs. Robert Robinson, program officer for Arecibo in the AGS division, hasn't laid down any requirements for observing time. However, "we would expect to have more flexibility in the use of the telescope," he says, including being given priority during geophysically interesting events like a solar storm. Cornell hopes to continue to operate the center. But it will have at least one competitor: SRI International, a nonprofit with a history of managing research and development projects, has said it also plans to bid for the 5-year contract. ­YUDHIJIT BHATTACHARJEE

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