Satellites measure recent rates of groundwater depletion in California's Central Valley
In highly-productive agricultural areas such as California's Central Valley, where groundwater often supplies the bulk of the water required for irrigation, quantifying rates of groundwater depletion remains a challenge owing to a lack of monitoring infrastructure and the absence of water use reporting requirements. Here we use 78 months (October, 2003 - March, 2010) of data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite mission to estimate water storage changes in California's Sacramento and San Joaquin River Basins. We find that the basins are losing water at a rate of 31.0 ± 2.7 mm yr ⁻¹ equivalent water height, equal to a volume of 30.9 km 3 for the study period, or nearly the capacity of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. We use additional observations and hydrological model information to determine that the majority of these losses are due to groundwater depletion in the Central Valley. Our results show that the Central Valley lost 20.4 ± 3.9 mm yr ⁻¹ of groundwater during the 78-month period, or 20.3 km ³ in volume. Continued groundwater depletion at this rate may well be unsustainable, with potentially dire consequences for the economic and food security of the United States.
document
https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7542p4w
eng
geoscientificInformation
Text
publication
2016-01-01T00:00:00Z
publication
2011-02-05T00:00:00Z
An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright 2011 American Geophysical Union.
None
OpenSky Support
UCAR/NCAR - Library
PO Box 3000
Boulder
80307-3000
name: homepage
pointOfContact
OpenSky Support
UCAR/NCAR - Library
PO Box 3000
Boulder
80307-3000
name: homepage
pointOfContact
2025-07-17T14:49:35.446320