Editing Ogallala Aquifer (section)

===Groundwater discharge===
[[File:Crops Kansas AST 20010624.jpg|thumb|NASA [[Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer|ASTER]] image of a roughly 557&nbsp;mi<sup>2</sup> area of fields (1443&nbsp;km<sup>2</sup>) in [[Kansas]] watered from the Ogallala Aquifer with center pivot irrigation systems]]
The regions overlying the Ogallala Aquifer are some of the most productive regions in the United States for ranching [[livestock]], and growing [[maize|corn]], [[wheat]], and [[soybeans]]. The success of large-scale farming in areas that do not have adequate [[precipitation (meteorology)|precipitation]] and do not always have perennial [[surface water]] for diversion has depended heavily on pumping groundwater for irrigation.

Early settlers of the semiarid High Plains were plagued by crop failures due to cycles of [[drought]], culminating in the disastrous [[Dust Bowl]] of the 1930s. Only after [[World War II]], when [[center-pivot irrigation]] became available, was the land mass of the High Plains aquifer system transformed into one of the most agriculturally productive regions in the world.