California has partnered with NASA to monitor drought, assess water resources and plan better strategies to survive an expected long-lasting dry weather.
While most of the states in America had experienced heavy rainfall and snowfall during the winter season, the state of California is experiencing dryness that is feared to cause the greatest water crisis in its modern history.
Last month, Governor Jerry Brown of California announced a drought emergency and ordered state officials to get ready for the imminent water shortages. He also asked them to plan solutions for a possibly long-standing dry season.
To help them create a better and effective plan, state officials told Reuters on Tuesday that they sought help from the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA).
Scientists from NASA are going to deploy imaging tools to measure snowpack and groundwater levels. They will also use a host of other technologies to better map and assess water resources that will be used to irrigate fields that are more than half a million acres wide.
"We're on the verge of being able to put all of these different kinds of instruments together, these measurements together, and start looking at the concept of perhaps closing the water budget of California," said Tom Farr, a geologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to reporters at a news conference.
Aside from assessing water resources, the state could also use data from the imaging tool to determine the extent of land subsidence due to decreasing groundwater levels, as well as identifying any damage caused by excessive groundwater pumping.
State officials will also utilize the satellite to track the area of uncultivated agricultural field in California's Central Valley and evaluate the effect of drought on agricultural production precisely.
In January, chief hydrologist Maurice Roos of the California Department of Water Resources, told Mercury News, "Cities would be inconvenienced greatly and suffer some. Smaller cities would get it worse, but farmers would take the biggest hit. Cities can always afford to spend a lot of money to buy what water is left."
Officials said that half a million acres of agricultural field will remain unused this year, which would cause the state a loss amounting to billions of dollar.
