Water Crisis In Barbados – Part 1: A Bird’s Eye View
In this first of a series of articles on the Water Crisis In Barbados, our favourite writer named John sets the stage for later installments. Before one can understand water on this small island of ours, it is necessary to understand the topography of Barbados…
1. Understanding the topography of Barbados – A bird’s eye view.
The internet puts at our disposal powerful visualization tools to help us understand many of the challenges we face in our daily life. Some of the first principles we learn at school can be used to understand and appreciate what we regard simply as a wonder of nature without ever removing the wonder of the experience.
Satellite imagery puts in our hands an easy and readily available way of visualizing the topography of Barbados, or any land mass. We can look at Barbados from all sorts of different angles and from all sorts of different positions. Google Earth and Nasa World Wind provide anyone with the means of flying over any part of Barbados. The images may be a few months out of date but reflect the appearance of the surface of Barbados accurately.
If you don’t already have Google Earth or Nasa World Wind try downloading them now.
Here is what Barbados looks like from a satellite as provided by Google Earth when viewed in relation to its immediate surroundings…
Barbados is the furthest east of the islands of the Lesser Antilles and is the highest point on a ridge formed by the motion of two tectonic plates, the Atlantic and the Caribbean plates. The chain of islands to its west are volcanic because of the same motion of two plates but Barbados is not.
… Continue reading Part 1 of Water Crisis In Barbados (link here)
8 Comments
November 11, 2006 at 3:00 am
Topography? Surely you mean Geology. Go take a tour of Harrison’s or Coles Cave or better yet go jump in a well (not literally). See if you can get your hands on a 1946 study done by Arthur Senn of the British Union Oil Co.
November 11, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Go upstairs to the Reference Library, in Bridgetown,
and ask the ladies at the desk.
Right behind you where you stand to speak to them, is a restricted area, under lock and key, last time I saw Senn’s report, it was produced from out of that area.
Not a big read, but an interesting look at our island – not our nation/people, at our ISLAND.
November 11, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Done all, even jumped in a well, literally as well!!
Will look at Alfred Senn’s report next.
I am trying to give a Bird’s Eye view, the geology will come!!
Trying to keep away from too much detail.
November 11, 2006 at 9:08 pm
I’ve got a Senn Report in my office.
November 14, 2006 at 5:07 am
[...] Bring a bottle: Water Crisis In Barbados [...]
March 26, 2007 at 4:15 pm
The average ethanol plant uses around 100
million gallons of water a year. That amount doesn’t even take into account all the water used for irrigating and growing the corn in the
first place, so the strain on the water table for some islands is a major threat.
March 26, 2007 at 4:41 pm
… don’t know how much water the average ethanol plant uses but I do know that there is water in the cane which is extracted as it is ground and the juice boiled and used in the production of sugar.
All sugar factories are I believe close to self sufficient in water.
Bajan technology!!
March 26, 2007 at 4:51 pm
John, I have been following your comments, much appreciated. The only point was that Barbados is somewhere near the top of the most arid countries on earth, and allocation of water for irrigation and ethanol production could be a disproportionate and uneconomical allocation compared to what the water allocation could do for food production.