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Oszkár Nagyapáti crawls to the bottom of a sand pit on his property in the Hungarian Great Plains and digs with his hands, looking for signs of groundwater that has accelerated its retreat in recent years.
“It’s worse, and it’s getting worse every year,” he said, as murky fluid slowly seeped into the hole. “Where did all this water go? It’s incredible.”
Nagyapáti watches with sadness as the southern region of Hungary, once an important agricultural region, becomes increasingly arid. Where the fields were once filled with various crops and grasses, today wide cracks appear in the soil and dunes grow, evoking the sahara desert Compare Central Europe.
semiarid areas
The area is called Homokhátság, and some studies describe it as semi-arid – a distinction that is more common in some areas. Africaa region of the southwestern United States or outback Australia characterized by little rainfall, dry wells and water tables deep underground.
In a 2017 paper published in the scientific journal Rural Europe, researchers cited “the combined effects of climate change, poor land use and poor environmental management” as the cause of Homohatsag’s drought, saying the phenomenon was unique in this part of the continent.
Farmland, often flooded by the Danube and Tisza rivers over the past few centuries, has become virtually unsuitable for crops and wildlife due to climate change-related droughts and poor water retention practices.
“Water Guardian”
Now, a group of farmers and other volunteers, led by Nagyapáti, are trying to save the region and its land from total desiccation using Hungary’s famous resource: hot springs.
“I was thinking about what could be done, how we could bring water back or create water in the landscape in some way,” Nagyapatti told The Associated Press. “There came a time when I felt like enough is enough. We really have to put an end to this. Since then, we’ve started our projects to flood some areas to keep the water on the plains.”
Along with a group of volunteer “Water Guardians,” Nagiapati began negotiating with authorities and a local spa last year to redirect overflowing water from the spring, which would normally be dumped into canals unused, onto their land. Hot spring water is pumped from deep underground.
Mimic natural flooding
Under Water Guardians’ plan, cooled and purified water will be used to flood 2.5 hectares (6 acres) of low-lying land – a way of mimicking the natural cycle of flooding after the river’s channelization ends.
“When the flooding ends and the water recedes, there will be 2.5 hectares of water in the area,” Nagyapáti said. “This would be a pretty shocking sight in our arid region.”
A 2024 study from Hungary’s Eötvös Lorand University showed that the region’s unusually dry surface air layer prevented any arriving storm fronts from producing precipitation. Instead, the front will pass without rainfall and cause high winds, further drying out the topsoil.
Create a microclimate
Water Champions hopes that by artificially flooding certain areas, it will not only raise water tables but also create microclimates through surface evaporation that will increase humidity, lower temperatures and dust, and have a positive impact on nearby vegetation.
Hungarian meteorologist Tamás Toth said that because of the potential impact such wetlands could have on the surrounding climate, water conservation “will be a key issue in the coming years and generations to come, as climate change does not appear to be letting up.”
“The atmosphere continues to warm, with the consequent distribution of seasonal and annual precipitation becoming very busy and expected to become even busier in the future,” he said.
“Great happiness”
After another hot, dry summer this year, water defenders blocked a series of locks along the canal and the spa’s repurposed water began to slowly collect in the low-lying fields.
After a few months, the site was almost filled. Standing next to the area in early December, Najiapati said the shallow swamp that formed “looks small, but it brings great joy to us in the desert.”
He said the added water would have a “huge impact” within a radius of about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles), “not just on the vegetation but also on the water balance of the soil. We hope the water table will rise as well.”
drought working group
Persistent drought in the Hungarian Great Plains has threatened desertification, a process in which vegetation degrades due to high temperatures and low rainfall. Weather-affected crops have dealt a major blow to the country’s overall GDP, prompting the Prime Minister Viktor Orban A “Drought Task Force” was announced this year to tackle the issue.
In Water Guardians’ first attempt to alleviate the growing problem in the area, they say groundwater levels have improved significantly and flora and fauna have increased near the flood site.
The group, which now has more than 30 volunteers, hopes to expand the project to another flooded area and hopes their efforts will inspire others to take similar action to protect this most precious resource.
“This initiative can set an example for everyone and we need more and more of these efforts,” Nagyapathi said. “We are retaining water for spas, but retaining water of any kind, whether in villages or towns, is a huge opportunity for hydration.”
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