An enormous torso of water has been found in volcanic rocks below the peak of the Oregon Cascade Range . The book is so magnanimous , the push to use it to handle regional water shortage is likely to come apace , but the solvent is not that easy . Meanwhile the proximity to catch some Z’s volcanoes could have implications for the character of eruptions Oregonians should expect .

TheLA firesare just one symptom of the growing shortfall of body of water in the American West . Some 20 million people depend for much of their urine on Lake Mead , which give 32 three-dimensional kilometer ( 7.7 cubic miles ) of water when full , but has n’t been for 40 years . In that context of use , the discovery of an unnamed aquifer holding an estimated 81 three-dimensional kilometers ( 19.4 cubic mi ) of H2O voice like it could be an solvent to H2O managers ’ prayers . “ It is a continental - sizing lake hive away in the rocks at the top of the mountains , like a big pee tower , ” say Dr Leif Karlstrom of the University of Oregon in astatement .

So the West is preserve ? Water for all ? Well , no . The volume of water is not the only thing that matters . For example , Australia ’s Great Artesian Basin contains almost athousand clock time as muchwater , but it has n’t keep that continent from frequent drought . Its water recharge so slowly that much of it is almost two million years older : once used it will not refill on human timescales .

Kalstrom warn the freshly discovered aquifer also needs to be treated as a non - renewable imagination . “ It is a bounteous , participating groundwater man-made lake up there properly now , but its seniority and resilience to change is set by the availability of recharge urine , ” he say . The master source of that recharge is the Cascades snowpack , which has been declining along with precipitation in the sleep of the American West .

“ This part has been hand a geologic natural endowment , but we really are only get down to understand it , ” allege the US Forest Service ’s Dr Gordon Grant . “ If we do n’t have any snow , or if we have a run of bad wintertime where we do n’t get any rain , what ’s that go to have in mind ? Those are the key question we ’re now have to focus on . ”

Even if only a fraction of thewatercan be used , the discovery could matter for other reasons .

Karlstrom , Grant , and co - author mark that when magma erupts in dry conditions it usually turns to lava at the open . Interactions with underground piss can instead create plosion of gas and ash tree , with import much further afield .

Seventeen years ago , Grant made asimilar find further southand traverse into California . Karlstrom allege these and other finds collectively “ likely make the Cascade Range the largest aquifer of its kind in the world . ”

Despite his late discovery , Grant suppose the squad were not expecting to come across something like this , and surely not depend for it . “ We initially set out to advantageously understand how the Cascade landscape has evolved over prison term , and how water move through it , ” Grant say .   The High Cascades are younger than the range to the west , and the transition zone is fundamental to understanding the region ’s geologic chronicle , and similar ranges elsewhere .

“ But in conducting this basic research , we discovered important thing that citizenry care about : the unbelievable volume of body of water in participating store in the Cascades and also how the bowel movement of body of water and the hazards posed by volcanoes are tie in together . ”

The team found that in the Western Cascades the Critical Zone , where the air influences geologic growing , is sometimes just meters deep . In the high-pitched Cascades , however , it can poke out down more than a kilometer ( 0.6 miles ) , as crevice allow the H2O to weather rocks to great depths .

The discovery was made using drilling information from the 1980s and 90 , when geologists were appraise the underground temperatures in the hope of regain functional sources of geothermal energy . Had they found an continuous organic structure of water theaquiferwould be old word , but instead it exists in a internet of cracks spanning a immense area beneath the High Cascades .

pee serves to even out the temperatures of Rock , so the authors used the measure of expanse where hole-and-corner temperatures were consistent to map the extent of the aquifer ’s tendrils .

The subject area is published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .