New UMass Amherst-led research reveals a significant overestimation of freshwater availability in the Lithium Triangle, urging immediate collaborative efforts to ensure sustainable lithium extraction crucial for the green economy.
New research led by UMass Amherst hydrologists reveals a stark underestimation of freshwater availability in South America’s “Lithium Triangle,” consisting of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. This region is home to more than half of the world’s lithium resources, a vital component for batteries powering the global transition to a low-carbon economy.
The study, published in Communications Earth and Environment, indicates that traditional models used to gauge water availability for lithium extraction are off by a significant margin. The findings suggest that these models overestimate the amount of freshwater by more than an order of magnitude, posing severe implications for local ecosystems and communities.
Understanding Lithium and Its Water Footprint
“Lithium is a strange element,” senior author David Boutt, a professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst, said in a news release. “It’s the lightest of the metals, but it doesn’t like to be in a solid form.”
Lithium is often found in layers of volcanic ash, leaching into groundwater and settling in flat basins as a dense brine beneath fresh surface water lagoons. These lagoons are vital habitats for unique ecosystems and are culturally significant for indigenous communities.
The escalating demand for lithium, projected to increase 40-fold in the coming decades, amplifies the urgency for ensuring sustainable water usage in these regions. Boutt and his team previously published on the age and lifecycle of water in the Lithium Triangle, laying the groundwork for this groundbreaking research.
New Insights from Custom Hydrological Models
The team developed a new model, the Lithium Closed Basin Water Availability (LiCBWA) model, to gain a more accurate understanding of water availability.
“We looked at 28 different basins in the Lithium Triangle, and we wanted to understand how scarce the freshwater is,” added lead author Alexander Kirshen, who was a research assistant at UMass Amherst at the time.
These are high, extremely arid and remote regions with few monitoring stations.
Global water models estimate the inflow of freshwater into these basins at approximately 90 to 230 mm per year. However, the LiCBWA model suggests a sharp divergence, estimating just 2 to 33 mm per year, with an average of only 11 mm for the 28 basins studied.
The conventional wisdom is overestimating the amount of water by at least an order of magnitude,” added Boutt, “and we found that all but one of the 28 basins in our study should be classified as ‘critically water scarce,’ even without incorporating current, to say nothing of future, demands on the water supply.”
Changing Practices and the Road Ahead
The study notes that newer lithium extraction methods, such as direct lithium extraction (DLE), consume significantly more water than traditional evaporative concentration. A staggering 56% of DLE sites in the Triangle use more water than older methods, with 31% using 10 times more.
“Because lithium mining is a reality in the Lithium Triangle,” the authors concluded, “scientists, local communities, regulators and producers must collaborate to reduce water use,” and enhance monitoring of precipitation, streamflow and groundwater levels to refine their hydrological models.
Co-authors of the study include Brendan J. Moran, Daniel B. Corkran and Magdalen Bresee from UMass Amherst, Lee Ann Munk from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Aeon A. Russo and Jordan Jenckes from the University of Alaska Anchorage, and Sarah V. McKnight from the University of Dayton.