alt.hn

1/13/2025 at 10:02:04 PM

Scientists Discover Underground Water Vault in Oregon 3x the Size of Lake Mead

 https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-discover-a-massive-underground-water-vault-in-oregon-3x-the-size-of-lake-mead/

by geox

1/14/2025 at 2:42:39 AM

Anybody have the actual paper? Found the actual publication in PNAS [1] and the author's page that has some of the prior work on lava zones [2], just not much about the actual paper or water reservoir area they're discussing. Looks like it went to conference back in 2023. Be nice if these folks had a pre-print server like Arxiv...

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2415155122

[2] https://pages.uoregon.edu/leif/markdown/

by araes

1/14/2025 at 10:11:10 PM

Making a guess reading the article, I'd say near Clear Lake, possibly as far south as Waldo lake and as far north as Breitenbush hotsprings. Although it looks like the claim is that similar amounts of water could be found under other regions in the Cascades. Both lakes are very deep and impressively clear, Clear lake has trees at the bottom that were killed in the creation of the lake when the volcano nearby erupted relatively recently.

by SpicyUme

1/14/2025 at 1:11:23 AM

3x the capacity of Lake Mead is about 9x the current Lake Mead.

by delichon

1/14/2025 at 6:50:22 AM

Or .75x the capacity of lake tahoe

by cwalv

1/14/2025 at 5:51:40 AM

Would have been better to not admit it was there or have hidden it.

The last things we need are more clean water reserves sucked dry by Intel rather than it focusing on guaranteeing its own supplies through other means, or used as excuses for Southern California not to continue its (admittedly in some counties admirable) efforts to get water resource management under control in concert with other states in the watersheds.

Resource curse.

by 1propionyl

1/14/2025 at 6:52:50 AM

The fresh water that the PNW currently has access to is mind boggling. If it even comes close to being scarce, the whole world is probably in trouble.

We irrigate millions of acres with the Columbia, and it’s still the largest river to hit the Pacific once it gets there. Every city gets their drinking water from their own personal watershed. No one needs to bother sucking water up from far below ground.

by pkulak

1/14/2025 at 6:51:29 PM

From a per capita perspective you are probably correct, but there are a ton of people in eastern OR & WA that live within a few miles of the river and still have domestic wells into endangered aquifers.

Additionally, there are a lot of farmers with ground water rights (ie wells) and not a ton with surface water rights (ie rivers).

by ahmeneeroe-v2

1/14/2025 at 7:04:51 AM

TIL semiconductor manufacturing uses a lot of water, relative to other production processes? And energy, for photolithography.

(Edit: nanoimprint lithography may have significantly lower resource requirements than traditional lithography? https://arstechnica.com/reviews/2024/01/canon-plans-to-disru... : "will be “one digit” cheaper and use up to 90 percent less power" )

Datacenters too;

"Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42376406

Most datacenters have no way to return their boiled, sterilized water for water treatment, and so they don't give or sell datacenter waste water back, it takes heat with it when it is evaporated.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42454547#42460317 :

> FWIU, datacenters are unable to sell their waste heat, boiled sterilized steam and water, unused diesel, and potentially excess energy storage.

"Ask HN: How to reuse waste heat and water from AI datacenters?" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820952

by westurner

1/14/2025 at 6:53:46 AM

How did it form?

How does it affect tectonics on the western coast of the US?

Cascade Range > Geology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Range#Geology

https://www.sci.news/othersciences/geophysics/hikurangi-wate... :

> Revealed by 3D seismic imaging, the newly-discovered [Hikirangi] water reservoir lies 3.2 km (2 miles) under the ocean floor off the coast of New Zealand, where it may be dampening a major earthquake fault that faces the country’s North Island. The fault is known for producing slow-motion earthquakes, called slow slip events. These can release pent-up tectonic pressure harmlessly over days and weeks

The "Slow earthquake" wikipedia article mentions the northern Cascades as a research area of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_earthquake

They say water has a fingerprint; a hydrochemical and/or a geochemical footprint?

Is the water in the reservoir subducted from the surface or is it oozing out of the Earth?

"Dehydration melting at the top of the lower mantle" (2014) https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1253358 :

> Summary: [...] Schmandt et al. combined seismological observations beneath North America with geodynamical modeling and high-pressure and -temperature melting experiments. They conclude that the mantle transition zone — 410 to 660 km below Earth's surface — acts as a large reservoir of water.

by westurner

1/14/2025 at 5:48:19 AM

I think I speak for all LA residents when I say - DIBS!

by suzzer99

1/14/2025 at 7:36:47 AM

I can't wait to exploit it :>

by kelseyfrog

1/14/2025 at 2:02:05 AM

81 teraliters according to the article.

by Aloisius

1/14/2025 at 3:37:21 AM

I have no idea what that means.

How many Lake Meads is that equivalent to, for reference?

by ethbr1

1/14/2025 at 4:13:44 AM

I want to know in units of lake Tahoe’s

by bradgessler

1/14/2025 at 4:33:00 AM

I thought you were joking and I laughed, but then I read the article and it says "It also holds more than half the volume of Lake Tahoe".. hmmm..

by Azerty9999

1/14/2025 at 4:35:07 AM

I’ll trade you 18 lake Tahoe’s for one Lake Michigan.

by bradgessler

1/14/2025 at 4:41:44 AM

Michigan's alright, but there are superior lakes out there.

by ethbr1

1/14/2025 at 4:44:07 AM

It’s very Erie when you say it that way.

by bradgessler

1/14/2025 at 4:47:47 AM

What are you trying to say? Wanna fight about it?

Because I've got eleven fingers worth of lakes that say different.

by ethbr1

1/14/2025 at 4:55:35 AM

Nope. I’ll just sea my way out.

by bradgessler

1/14/2025 at 1:15:28 PM

Way to keep your hud, son.

by ethbr1

1/14/2025 at 5:19:27 AM

How many submerged Libraries of Congresses is that??

by temp0826

1/14/2025 at 1:32:31 PM

Michigan or Michigan-Huron?

by cozzyd

1/14/2025 at 3:28:42 AM

Oh yes, measuring things in Lake Meads. What is that even the only lake in California or something?

by idunnoman1222

1/14/2025 at 5:02:07 AM

To be fair, there is a connecting thread here.

Lake Mead is the primary water display to a number of states. It's also pretty low (and getting lower).

By comparing this resource to Lake Mead, it's making it relevant as a possible source of water. (Americans never found a resource they didnt want to exploit).

Of course it's not as simple as that. Water in aquifers is different to water in lakes. And it's not clear if the aquifer water could be directed into the Colorado River. Or how easily it can be extracted from the rock. Or how quickly it will replenish.

But the point is made. This is a lot of water that might be useful at scale.

by bruce511

1/14/2025 at 7:16:27 AM

Why would that water go to the Colorado River? There are a lot of mountains in the way of that idea.

by bagels

1/14/2025 at 6:26:02 AM

> Or how quickly it will replenish.

This is, unfortunately, the last thing that matters.

by hulitu

1/14/2025 at 4:55:14 AM

When you get to a certain volume you are required to use Lake Meads instead of Olympic Swimming pools as the unit of measurement. Look I don’t make the rules.

by alemanek

1/14/2025 at 7:52:15 AM

What it is as a multiple of the size of Wales? Or how many storeys of a building?

I'm lost without sensible units.

by rich_sasha

1/14/2025 at 1:24:20 PM

> Or how many storeys of a building?

19, but only if you start with a ground floor

by NikkiA

1/17/2025 at 1:29:18 AM

> 19, but only if you start with a ground floor

With ground floor starting at 0 like in North America or at 1 as they have it in Europe?

Bonus: How do you call an elevator in Japan?

  You press the button.

by x______________

1/14/2025 at 3:54:21 AM

It straddles the Nevada/Arizona border and sits behind Hoover Dam.

by x3n0ph3n3

1/14/2025 at 4:57:15 AM

It's not in California.

by bagels

1/14/2025 at 8:37:17 PM

Awesome! In 4 or 5 years we should be able to drain that and let the aquifer collapse!

+1 for gratuitous consumption!

by johnea

1/14/2025 at 5:53:26 AM

This meme does not miss [1].

> There is a global resource shortage.

> Authoritarian state on the other side of the planet controls it.

> US is finished.

> American farmer in the middle of nowhere US discovers the largest supply of said resource known to mankind.

> Repeat.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1e77yxp/it_keep...

by 015a

1/14/2025 at 6:07:16 AM

and how does this apply to water?

by insane_dreamer

1/14/2025 at 7:17:39 AM

We do keep finding new bodies of water. Unfortunately, they come in the form of hurricanes.

by bagels

1/14/2025 at 4:06:50 PM

Any life down there?

by cedws

1/14/2025 at 1:56:08 AM

okay but it is water instead of mead? would prefer mead

by awinter-py

1/14/2025 at 2:14:27 AM

That's Mead Lake, you're thinking of, not Lake Mead

by cardamomo

1/14/2025 at 3:41:10 AM

And I would've gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meadling kids!

by incanus77

1/14/2025 at 5:52:33 AM

Will now be exploited.

by andrewstuart

1/14/2025 at 4:01:38 AM

...and it's gone!

by jdlyga

1/14/2025 at 12:54:14 AM

[dead]

by aaron695

1/14/2025 at 12:52:54 AM

[dead]

by DueDilligence