As climate change affects us more and more, we need to start thinking about our valuable natural resources and how to protect them. Among many things, water is a major component of life and will be greatly affected; the more climate change begins to affect us.
Groundwater is water that has been trapped in an aquifer for an indefinite amount of time. More recently, as water becomes scarce in some parts of the world, people have been drilling for it. You wouldn’t think this is a bad thing because water is a renewable resource. But the problem is that at the rate it is being drilled for is much faster than the water is being replaced. About 50% of people in the US depend on groundwater, and the rate is even higher in India at 80%.
Luckily, NASA has come up with this amazing form of remote sensing through a project called GRACE. GRACE stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. In GRACE, two satellites (instead of one) are used together, acting as magnets as they orbit the Earth at a 500 km altitude. Data is received by them every 5 seconds, and the measurement is how far apart they are from each other. In short, GRACE can measure total amounts of water storage.
So what does this mean for humanity?
With data from GRACE, NASA has been able to notice trends in Terrestrial Water Storage. For instance, the exploitation of water resources has been observed in areas where data could not simply be collected due to political or technological barriers. GRACE observes changes in water storage from natural variability, climate change, and human activities. This technology could potentially be used to detect expected droughts, floods, and possible impacts on the water supply.
This has been a critical and remarkable step for human kind. Our advancements in technology could help us save lives and the planet as a whole.