Describe and evaluate water management strategies (excluding those directed at flood control).

The ground is another way to extract and consume water. The artesian basin is the layer beneath the ground where groundwater lies and can be taken from. Groundwater is very useful for agriculture, industry and domestic households as it functions as drinking water and as a great source of irrigation; yet, artesian basins can only be used as long as they are given enough time to recharge from a well after it has been exploited or if it is recharged artificially by pumping rainwater, for example, into it.
However, groundwater pollution and depletion have immense consequences as agriculture poisons groundwater with the use of fertilizers and pesticides, industry with chemicals and metals, domestic households with products like shampoo. In addition, recharging basins artificially with saltwater, make them useless for human consumption. Over-exploiting groundwater basins when there is drought leads to no more groundwater to rely on and there is a higher risk of crop failure. Also, if too much groundwater is removed, the ground might sink down, like it happened in Mexico City.
Even though, groundwater is very usable for human use, a balance between exploitation and recharging has to be found without polluting and destroying the groundwater reservoirs.

Apart from dams and groundwater reservoirs, freshwater wetlands have to be managed well as they have fundamental ecological functions.
Wetlands are areas of land, which are full of moisture mostly or always throughout the year.
The Kissimmee River located in central Florida, USA was a river with a length of 200 kilometers.
Due to population growth and flooding, the wetland was channelized from a 200 kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide river to a 90 kilometers long and 10 kilometers wide river.  
Increased agriculture around the wetland and urbanization additionally caused the Kissimmee river to dry out, leading to a decline of fishing, bird watching and hunting tourism as well as a pollution of nitrogen and phosphorous in the lake Okeechobee.
However, wetlands are able to recharge groundwater, as water does not move and has time to sink into the ground. Wetlands are home to rare species and the vegetation of wetlands can help to clean and purify water, as well as to support the storage of organic matter, which stores greenhouse gases and keeps them from going into the atmosphere.

Wetlands certainly have great functions in stabilizing humanity’s trash and mistakes and thereby should be managed accordingly, instead of destroying it.

        Lastly, another important to be taken care of is the water management of irrigation.

Irrigation is the simply progress of providing land with water taken from natural resources such as rivers, lakes and groundwater.

Libya, a country covered by the Saharan Desert and therefore very arid has found huge groundwater basins. Since irrigation increases the amount of agricultural land by making it more fertile, Libya now uses the new source to irrigate the desert, as over 6,500,000 liters are being extracted daily and the basin is estimated to last 1,000 years.
Also, irrigation enables the provision of water to the industry and by expanding agriculture; it reduces Libya’s independence on other countries, concerning food import and may provide a source of foreign currency.

However, if water irrigation is not managed properly, there is risk of a fall of the water table, as in Texas, USA where the water table has sunk 50 meters, due to bad management. Moreover, irrigation often leads to an increase of salinization as the Aral Sea, on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, started to irrigate the desert surrounding it in 1960 and by 2007 the salinity changed from 10 grams/L at the start to 100 grams/L, whereas normal seawater has a salinity of 35 grams/L. The problem of the rapidly increasing salinity destroyed the sea’s ecosystem and

crops being planted nearby as storms would take the masses of salt left in the ‘Aral Sea’ and carry them on.

Although irrigation systems have negative sides, it is a very good strategy if they are managed well.

To conclude, these four strategies established to manage water better, all connect to each other and can only work if all other strategies are being thought of when one is being used, as wetlands, for example, mustn’t be destroyed as they are very helpful in recharging groundwater.
Most often, the case of over-exploitation and inconsideration of consequences lead to destructions of ecosystems, as water is the main part of them.
These strategies will have to balance themselves and humanity will have to look at the rate of water extraction and the actual consumption, in order to make a difference.