Ilya U. Topper |
Konya (Turkey).- A round hole in the middle of the field, several meters deep: these are the sinkholes of Konya, a province in central Anatolia where irrigated agriculture has triggered a geological phenomenon that is becoming a serious danger .
Perfectly circular and with vertical walls, these holes give the impression that the earth has swallowed what was on the surface.
Sinkholes, usually 10 to 30 meters in diameter and 30 to 40 meters deep, often appear overnight in crops on the vast Konya plain.
At the moment there are no misfortunes. In the Inoba sinkhole, 24 meters in diameter and 35 meters deep, “no one has fallen, neither people nor animals, because God has not wanted it,” says Ibrahim, a laborer from a nearby farm.
He remembers that the sinkhole, now surrounded by a rickety fence, was formed in 2008, he tells EFE.
Also the other sinkholes in Konya are only protected with some remains of wire fence, and are practically invisible in the middle of the field until one approaches a few meters from the edge.
The geological phenomenon is due to the fact that the terrain is made up of calcareous rock with sediments that house water tables and that can collapse if a hole is created, dragging the earth down.
The appearance of sinkholes in Konya, aggravated by drought
It is not new. In fact, there are sinkholes many thousands of years old and hundreds of meters in diameter, such as Meyil, which preserves a lake at the bottom and is a well-known tourist destination.
The droughts of recent decades, which have lowered the groundwater level, have facilitated the formation of these holes, with 14 new sinkholes recorded in the first decade of the current century alone.
But another factor is human: the intense irrigated agriculture that has spread on Konya’s fertile but dry plain since the 1990s has accelerated the phenomenon, according to a study by Ankara University.
Where sheep herders once roamed, calf farms now proliferate and fodder is planted that needs more water than is available on this near-desert plain in central Anatolia, with temperatures ranging from 40 degrees in summer to minus 20 degrees below zero in winter.
“We grow corn, beets and wheat,” the old Murat, who cares for animals in an almost abandoned village now covered by snow, tells EFE, where the iron framework of an old well, now unused, can still be seen.
«Before we found water 30 meters deep; now we have to go down to 120. Companies come with machinery that drill wells to order”, he adds, pointing to a pipe coming out of the ground.
Illegal wells favor the appearance of sinkholes
Of the more than 100,000 wells drilled in the Konya plain, 70% are illegal and serve to irrigate plants with high water needs, according to the study by Ankara University.
“Before, the wells were 50 meters deep, now they go down to 300, even 400 meters to draw water for irrigating corn,” says Hasan Ekici, local leader of the opposition party “Gelecek” in Konya.
“Corn requires a lot of water, that has led to the natural disaster of the sinkholes,” he points out in statements to EFE.
The solution he proposes to prevent the proliferation of Konya’s sinkholes, a diversion from neighboring river basins, also has critics, because droughts and water scarcity affect all of Anatolia.
Closing illegal wells and returning to crops that consume less water may be the only way to prevent the land from striking back and simply swallowing up those who continue to exploit it.
