Hydrology: A Question of Birthright

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All the rivers run into the sea; Yet the sea is not full; Unto the place from whence the rivers come, Thither they return again.

—Ecclesiastes 1:7

Without it there can be no life, and down through the ages man has accepted the water around him as a gift from God—a birthright to be squandered or saved according to the demands of circumstance. Confident of an unending supply from earth's mighty rivers and timeless seas, man has wasted water and polluted it. Parched by unpredictable droughts, he has migrated thousands of miles to slake his thirst. He has fought over it since ancient times: Sennacherib of Assyria revenged himself on Babylon by dumping debris in the city's canals; today armed Arabs and Israelis challenge each other across the banks of the disputed River Jordan.

Man's current concern over water reflects a serious, worldwide shortage in the midst of plenty. For while it is a fact of nature that water swamps nearly three-fourths of the earth's surface, it is also an ironic truth that it cannot always be found where it is needed, when it is needed, in the amounts that are required. Of the 326,071,300 cubic miles* of water on earth, 97.2% is in the oceans, unfit to drink, too salty for irrigation. Another 2% lies frozen and useless in glaciers and icecaps. The tiny usable fraction that is left is neither evenly distributed nor properly used.

The chronic drought that is a way of life in the Sahara and the Middle East has now descended on lands as far off as Korea and Bechuanaland. Australia is suffering its worst water shortage in half a century; the normally moist northeastern U.S. is watching its green lawns wither through the end of a dry summer while its reservoir levels drop lower and lower. And even in the areas where water remains abundant, man is fouling it with his untreated sewage and industrial wastes.

Everywhere, water troubles have bred a new and urgent interest in the long-neglected science of hydrology. President Johnson has set up a Water Resources Council to study U.S. water needs and oversee conservation; he has set aside up to $275 million for research and the development of an economical system for converting sea water to fresh water. Scientists and industrialists from 58 nations will gather in Washington next week for the first international symposium on water desalinization. For hydrologists, who had to take a back seat during the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year, this burst of attention has led not to a year of their own but a decade.

Under the sponsorship of UNESCO, scientists from more than 70 nations began this year to pool their research talents and facilities in the International Hydrological Decade. IHD scientists are already establishing a worldwide net work of hydrology stations to map climate conditions, to study precipitation, ground-water levels and stream ecology, and to measure water's capacity for self-purification. Says Michel Batisse, a French engineer who heads the IHD: "It may turn out that the most important results of the IHD will not be strictly scientific but the side effects. For the first time, and forever, modern civilization will become water-conscious."