Satellites Unlock Secret to Northern India’s Vanishing Water

– If this isn’t concerning enough, then reflect back on the piece I published back on July 1st about the water shortages coming to India and Pakistan because of the melting glaciers.

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WASHINGTON — Using NASA satellite data, scientists have found that groundwater levels in northern India have been declining by as much as one foot per year over the past decade. Researchers concluded the loss is almost entirely due to human activity.

More than 26 cubic miles of groundwater disappeared from aquifers in areas of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and the nation’s capitol territory of Delhi, between 2002 and 2008. This is enough water to fill Lake Mead, the largest manmade reservoir in the United States, three times.

A team of hydrologists led by Matt Rodell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., found that northern India’s underground water supply is being pumped and consumed by human activities, such as irrigating cropland, and is draining aquifers faster than natural processes can replenish them. The results of this research were published today in Nature.

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