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A comment on 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. Parent comment

Re:75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass ... by titzer on Thursday October 19, 2017 @05:17AM (#15506512)
This article (http://scienceline.org/2011/07/lawns-vs-crops-in-the-contine...) is about water usage, but it states that there is more lawn acreage in the US than the 8 top irrigated crops combined.

(Discussed here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lawn-largest-crop-ameri...) (original here: http://www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXVI/8-W27/milesi.pdf)

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Re:75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass ... by immutable_ai on Friday October 20, 2017 @08:53AM (#15515343)
This article seems very misleading, at least for California.

If you look at aggregate water usage for California agriculture uses 4X "urban" and "urban" includes industrial, golf courses, parks, etc.

So even if lawns are using more area they are much less water intensive than agriculture.

http://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

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Re:75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass ... by autokad on Friday October 20, 2017 @09:50AM (#15515721)
the majority of usage goes towards power generation (https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wateruse-total.html). urban areas consume the power, but they dont produce it. they hide their water usage in the rural areas.
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Re:75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass ... by immutable_ai on Saturday October 21, 2017 @09:34AM (#15521785)
Looking at that data it appears that a majority of California's water for power generation is coming from salinated sources, so at least for California the largest user of fresh water sources is still irrigation (agriculture).

Either way, the point that agriculture takes a lot more water than people watering their lawns still stands.

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