Satellites weigh California water

Nasa satellites have weighed the water lost by the US State of California’s heartland since 2003.

The Sacramento and San Joaquin River Basins which support the highly productive Central Valley have shed over 30 cubic km of water in that time.

The data comes from the Grace mission which detects changes in gravity caused by water as it cycles between the sea, the atmosphere and the land.

It illustrates the impact of a drought but also excessive irrigation use.

“The numbers we’re getting out of this analysis point to groundwater use at unsustainable rates,” said Professor Jay Famiglietti of the University of California, Irvine.

“It’s leading to declining water tables, decreased crop sizes, and continued land subsidence – something that has been going on in the Central Valley for decades.”

Professor Famiglietti has been describing the California situation here at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world’s largest annual gathering of Earth scientists.

It is big issue because of California’s importance to food production in the US.

Its Central Valley is one of the major agricultural regions in the world.

It grows more than 250 different crops, accounting for a little under a tenth of all the food produced in the US by value. But the Central Valley also accounts for about a sixth of all the irrigated land in the US, making the region the second most pumped aquifer in America.

Read more . . .

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Tags: california water, central valley, irrigated land, nasa satellites, san joaquin river, troubled waters, university of california irvine, water deal, water tables, water woes

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 10:44 pm and is filed under BBC, Consider This, Dire Warnings, Innovation, Innovation Needed, Resources, Shape of Things to Come?, The Food Challenge, climate change, environment, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.