New study finds freshwater availability amounts for lithium mining overestimate – Air quality issues

New research on lithium mining in the “lithium triangle” of Massachusetts – more than half of the world’s lithium resources – shows that the impact of common models used to estimate lithium content can be used for lithium content and on environmental effects is far from more than a certain extent. The paper, published in Communication Earth and the Environment, shows that less water is available than previously thought. With the demand for minerals, which is crucial for batteries that power the green transition, is expected to increase 40 times in the coming decades, and research shows that local communities, regulators and the lithium mining industry must collaborate quickly to bring their water use to sustainability.

Lithium is said by David Boutt, a professor of earth sciences at UMass Amherst, and it is a strange element. It is the lightest of metal, but does not like to be kept in solid form. Lithium tends to occur in layers of volcanic ash, but it reacts quickly with water. When rain or snow melts through the ash layer, lithium leaches out of the groundwater and moves downhill until it settles into a flat basin, where it remains in solution as a brittle mixture of water and lithium. Because this brine is very dense, it settles into a light n-top surface water mouth, which is located on top of the lithium-rich liquid below, forming a lagoon.

These lagoons often serve as a safe haven for unique and fragile ecosystems and iconic species such as flamingos, which are crucial to local communities, including indigenous peoples long known as the Lithium Triangle. Any use of fresh water has the risk of disrupting the ecological health and indigenous lifestyle in the region – that’s the ones Boutt and his team have previously published about the age and life cycle of triangle water.

“We looked at 28 different basins in the lithium triangle,” said lead author Alexander Kirshen.

This is not an easy task, as these basins are located in high, extremely arid and relatively remote areas within the Andes. The lithium triangle is over 160,000 miles and there are few sensors and monitoring stations to track factors such as flow and precipitation.

“The climate and hydrology of lithium triangles are difficult to understand,” Butte said. Therefore, scientists and engineers rely on global water models to best estimate the amount of water and environmental impacts of lithium mine excavations within the triangle.

Two of the most commonly used global water models show that freshwater flowing into the lithium triangular basin is approximately 90 mm and 230 mm per year. “But after preliminary evaluation, we suspect it will be too inaccurate for our purposes,” Cosen said.

Therefore, the team built their own model, called the Li-Closed Basin Water Availability Model or LICBWA, and what they found was a clear disagreement with traditional understanding.

“These systems simply don’t have much new fresh water,” Butte said. Although the global model averages inflows per year are 90 mm and 230 mm, the LICBWA estimates are 2 to 33 mm depending on the specific basin, and in their study, the 28 basins average only 11 mm per year. “The traditional view overestimates the order of magnitude of water volume, and we found that all the contents in all of the 28 basins in our study should be classified as ‘severe water scarcity’, even if not integrated with the present, there is no description of future requirements for water supply.”

Meanwhile, the process of mining lithium is changing. Older methods (called evaporation concentrations) are replaced by direct lithium extraction (DLE), while 56% of the DLE sites in the triangle use more water than older evaporation processes. Nearly one-third of DLE facilities (31%) use 10 times more water than evaporation concentrations.

“Because lithium mining is a reality of the lithium triangle,” the authors concluded, “scientists, local communities, regulators and producers must collaborate to reduce water use” and are committed to better monitoring of precipitation, water flow and groundwater levels for more preciseness.

Researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Anchorage and the University of Dayton contributed to the study, with BMW Group and BASF funding.

Source: “New research finds that we have overestimated the amount of freshwater available for lithium mining,” March 26, 2025, UMass Amherst press release.

The above and corresponding, connected home page is equipped with image: David Boutt