World-Herald Editorial: Where water goes

When hydroclimatologist John Lenters pokes around the Alaskan far north, one of the things he’s doing should end up helping Nebraska irrigators.

Lenters is with the University of Nebraska- Lincoln’s School of Natural Resources. He studies thaw lakes, pools of fresh water that form on the top of permafrost.

What he’s most interested in is the evaporative process; studying Alaska, the Nebraska Sand Hills and other lakes should tell him a lot about “how much evaporation occurs, how and why it varies and how it might change” depending on climatic conditions, he said.

Nebraska irrigators, pivot system irrigators as well as those who use open ditches, should be deeply interested in evaporation, given the limited water resource in the state. Cutting the evaporation rate would mean less irrigation water was needed because more water would be getting to crops.

As Lenters notes, evaporation is “one of the biggest losses of water from the land surface hydrologic system.” Just one example of how university research can have an impact on the lives of ordinary Nebraskans.

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