WASHINGTON: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has made a discovery through which it can measure Western water loss.
A tool invented by NASA will measure that how much water loss takes place by plants, soils, and other surfaces in the U.S West. It says that, it could help the farmers and water management authorities to manage the water resources in arid regions.
With the help of satellite images through platform OpenET, the project is based on decade’s long geological surveys which will help to measure human impact on the earth’s surface. Initially, the data will provide information about 17 western states. Moreover, the west has been severely hit by droughts, floods, and other natural disasters which had limited its water reserves much to an extent that the government had to cut its water supply from various states.
Meanwhile, with the help of NASA’s new tool farmers and other management authorities will be able to determine better plans for their irrigation systems, stated by NASA scientists during its call on Thursday with reporters.
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Robyn Grimm, a water specialist with the Environmental Defense Fund said, “Farmers and water managements have not had consistent, timely data on one of the most important pieces of information for managing water, which is the amount of water that’s consumed by crops and other plants as they grow, to date, that data has been expensive and fragmented”.
However, according to NASA, the platform includes historical data dating back to 1984 and in the coming months, it will be updated to include more information about precipitation rates with the same level of detail.
