I am often asked these days about whether I think that the decade-long drought in Syria has played any role in the violent conflict there. My answer is always the same: absolutely.

The reason is quite simple, and we have all experienced it. When our basic human needs are not met -- for water, food, clothing, shelter, or sleep -- we get grumpy. When we get grumpy, we fight. We'll snap at our children, bicker with our partners and argue with our neighbors. In regions like the Middle East, which has fought over water for several millennia, it does not take much to fan the flames of dispute into a bonfire of violent conflict.

Last February our research team released a new study of groundwater depletion in the Middle East. The area that we analyzed included Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The political boundaries of these countries overlie a different set of boundaries, namely those of the Fertile Crescent - the Tigris and Euphrates River basins that supplied the water to support the cradle, and rise, of human civilization.

Using NASA satellites, we found that between 2003 and 2009, the region had lost 144 cubic kilometers of fresh water, an amount that is equivalent to the volume of the Dead Sea. We determined that roughly 60% of the lost water came from the depletion of the regions aquifers (mostly used for irrigation), making it the second hottest of the world's hotspots for groundwater depletion. Only northwestern India has experienced greater groundwater losses in the same time frame. Subsequent analyses have shown that those rates of water loss continue into the present.

Sitting right in the crosshairs of that Middle Eastern hotspot is Syria.

That's not to say that the severe water shortages directly resulted in violent conflict. However, Syria has in fact experienced the perfect storm of water-related misfortunes, that taken together, have arguably played a major role in triggering uprising and violence. Let me highlight a few of these here.

For the complete article, please see The Huffington Post.