Monitor groundwater is more important than before. The majority of Western United States experienced the worst drought in 12 centuries. And climate change will only worsen the situation.Aquifer, which is a porous rock or earth that contains ground water, can be a life for farmers and cities. Pumping them dry, on the other hand, causing the surrounding soil to sag, a process known as subsidence. It has the potential to cause a drain hole, destroy infrastructure, and undermine the formation of underground water storage.But ground water is difficult to monitor – sometimes – sometimes located thousands of feet below the surface. That’s where the satellite enters.
Kyra Kim is a postdoctoral colleague at NASA Propulsion Laboratory Jet, where researchers have created models to track groundwater levels with two satellite systems. One uses gravitational pull fluctuations to measure underground water mass, and the other uses radar to map surface topography.
Kyra Kim: We can synthesize two joint missions -the same to understand what the relationship between groundwater thinning and land decline. So using this technology, we can track ground water on a global scale. That’s not, you know, very easy before only with traditional field methods.The following is a transcript edited from the host talks Meghan McCarty Carino with Kim.Meghan McCarty Carino: And how does this add to our understanding of groundwater thinning?
Kim: Traditionally, I think, even myself, as a scientist, I have focused more on long -term changes. And that really makes us very difficult to understand some seasonal changes that we might see with rising water. But we only saw some monthly changes that occurred. So we can then begin to understand the changes in water and land tables on a scale that may be more relevant to management and for, you know, seasonal changes.McCarty Carino: Right, so you can estimate a little closer to the estimated groundwater, compared to a long -term horizon that is much longer. Kim: Right.
McCarty Carino: And why is it important to track ground water? Kim: Unlike surface water – for example, rivers and lakes – which we can see with the naked eye, the ground water is under our feet. And clearly, it makes it very difficult to understand how much is there and how much we use. So I like to say that it’s easy to think about it like a savings account. Especially in areas like California, where we have a lot of agricultural activities, water demand is also very high and in large metropolitan areas. And when we have surface water, it’s easy to use the water. But when we have conditions such as drought, or surface water is not available, ground water is something that we rely on like a savings account. If we cannot track how much is easy, then it becomes your type using money from your savings account, but you don’t know how much there is.
We have a full explanation of the NASA level about the model that Kyra Kim and her satellite are working on. One system is known as Grace, for recovery of gravity and climate experiments. It was made of two satellites that chased each other – as explained by Kim – such as Tom and Jerry, cartoon cats and mice. One satellite chases the other exactly 137 miles behind, but a little variation in the pull of the earth’s gravity, from features such as ground water or ice hats, causing fluctuating distances. This gives a sense of mass features and how they change over time.
For example, Grace has been used to track ice smelting in Greenland and Antarctica. Because they gave fewer gravitational pulls when they melted, scientists concluded that Greenland had lost about 5,000 gigatons of ES more than 15 years. Nasa said it was enough to cover the entire Texas state in the 26 feet high ice. When it comes to measure ground water, having a better real time data can be useful in California. The new country began to manage the use of ground water to keep supplies sustainable.
During the drought, like now, about 80% of irrigation water for the large country’s agricultural business came from an underground aquifer, where the previous landowners could not use almost without limits. As for MegadPougk, I mentioned that the West had experienced, scientists said it was the worst in at least 1,200 years. It was as far as he returned like a tree ring they learned away. The researchers said that the higher temperature that came with climate change increases evaporation and is likely to make drought occurs.