Groundwater use can be accurately monitored with satellites using OPENet | Science & Technology

The new study, published August 8th in a special issue of Agricultural Water Management, compared groundwater meter data with OpenET estimates for agricultural fields in Nevada and Oregon. The results demonstrate that OpenET can be used to accurately estimate the amount of groundwater used for crop irrigation at the level of individual fields. This is the first research to follow water from a groundwater well to a single field of crops, assess how much of that water the crops consumed, and provide insights into irrigation efficiencies at the same time. The method can inform water use for groundwater management planning across the country.

“We knew where the water was drawn from and where it was being applied, and we showed that the satellite data could tell us how much crop water use and pumping occurred for individual fields,” said Thomas Ott, assistant research scientist of hydrology at DRI and a lead author of the study. Access to detailed meter data is rare, Ott adds, so past studies focused on broader regions and couldn’t assess water use at the level of individual fields.

Evapotranspiration refers to the combined processes of evaporation and transpiration, or the return of water to the atmosphere from Earth’s surface and through plant photosynthesis. OpenET uses data from NASA and U.S. Geological Survey Landsat satellites combined with weather variables like humidity, air temperature, and solar radiation to estimate…