Where is the Water Underneath India Disappearing To? NASA Is Determined to Find Out

September ‘09 Space Article-National Scene Magazine

Where is the Water Underneath India Disappearing To?

NASA Is Determined to Find Out

Written by: Karen Benardello


Underneath the land of one of the most populated countries in the world, the water has been mysteriously disappearing, which has lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) hydrologists to try to help determine where the supply is going.

Matt Rodell, one such hydrologist, and his colleagues at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have been observing the country from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). They have determined the water is being pumped and consumed by the country’s citizens, primarily to irrigate cropland, at a faster rate than the aquifers can be replenished by natural processes.

Groundwater accumulates in aquifers and decline and rise again naturally each year. But its levels do not respond to changes in weather as rapidly as lakes, streams, and rivers do, so when they are pumped for irrigation, so it can take months or years to their original levels.

The northern states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, for example, have all seen groundwater depletion, due in part to staggering population growth, rapid economic development and water-hungry farms. Data provided by India’s Ministry of Water Resources stated the regional rate of depletion was unknown.

According to GRACE, groundwater levels have been declining by an average of one meter every three years (one foot per year), and more than 26 cubic miles of groundwater disappeared between 2002 and 2008. “We don’t know the absolute volume of water in the Northern Indian aquifers, but GRACE provides strong evidence that current rates of water extraction are not sustainable,” Rodell said.

The loss is particularly alarming because it occurred when there were no droughts. In fact, rainfall was slightly above normal recently. “The region has become dependent on irrigation to maximize agricultural productivity, so we could be looking at more than a water crisis,” Rodell also added.

”At its core, this dilemma is an age-old cycle of human need and activity-particularly the need for irrigation to produce food,” said Bridget Scanlon, a hydrologist at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas in Austin. “That cycle is now overwhelming fresh water reserves all over the world. Even one region’s water problem has implications beyond its borders.”