Silicon Valley Seems to Have Quick Drought Recovery

The study by NASA/university finds that aggressive conservation has helped area’s aquifer to rebound quickly from the worst drought that has happened in Californian history. Underground water reserves rebounded quickly in the California’s Silicon Valley.

Satellite data were used from COSMO-SkyMed, a group of four Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana or ASI) satellites, a research team lead by Estelle Chaussard at the University at Buffalo in New York and also scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. All of them used a technique called synthetic aperture radar interferometry to closely observe the entire Santa Clara Valley aquifer near San Jose. It was done from 2011 to 2017. To calculate the land surface elevation that has been changed over time, scientists have used hundreds of radar images obtained under a license from ASI. Measurements done showed that the aquifer began to rebound in late 2014. The credit goes to all conservation measures applied heavily in 2014 and the heavy rains of 2016.

By: Bhavna Sharma

Content: climate.nasa.gov