The Colorado River is the only major river in the southwest U.S. and it supplies irrigation for approximately 4 million acres of farmland across seven states. Water above ground in the Colorado River Basin is measured and managed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, however underground aquifers are managed by individual states and not well documented. The only way to construct a study of such a vast area is through the use of satellites. Since 2000 the Colorado River Basin has suffered from severe drought conditions creating the driest 14-year period in the past 100 years according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and a new study by NASA and the University of California at Irvine found that more than 75% of the water lost was lost from underground sources, posing a greater threat to the water supply to the region than originally thought. Monthly measurements using data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery & Climate Experiment (GRACE) between December 2004 and November 2013 found that the basin lost 53 million acre feet of freshwater – double the volume of Lake Mead. Of this loss, 41 million acre feet was from groundwater – an amount higher than expected. Considering the declining snowpack and increasing population, this continued depletion will threaten the water supply from the basin. To read further:
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