Evolution of Public Supply Water Withdrawal in the USA: A Network Approach

• DOI: 10.1111/jiec.12266
• Publication Date: 2015-03-17T14:45:35Z
• Authors: Nasir Ahmad; Sybil Derrible
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 01 natural sciences; 6. Clean water; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Summary Water is essential to life, and tracking trends in the withdrawal of water paramount if we aspire become more sustainable. Traditional statistical indicators, such as mean standard deviation, are useful track these trends, but they can sometimes fail capture relevant nontrivial properties. In this work, first highlight limits traditional tools then offer a new network approach study withdrawals. Public supply data from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for years 1985, 1990, 1995, 2005 were used gallons per capita day all counties. Essentially, formed between counties when have values within certain range, ± ξ, one another. A giant cluster rapidly emerges, containing than 80% nodes ξ 1%. The with highest number connections associated mode distribution, found multimodal patterns earlier years. Moreover, average shortest‐path length be seen spread distribution. Overall, beyond possible process homogenization, do not seem evolved much 1985 2005, no spatial correlation was detected. Though methodology yet formalized, it manages give meaningful insights supplement analyses.