Californians are continuing to pump groundwater in response to the historic drought in the state. Meanwhile, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) released a new NASA report showing land in the San Joaquin Valley is sinking faster than ever before - nearly 2 inches per month in some locations.
Because of increased pumping, groundwater levels are reaching record lows- up to 100 feet lower than previous records, said DWR director Mark Cowin. As extensive groundwater pumping continues, the land is sinking more rapidly and this puts nearby infrastructure at greater risk of costly damage. Sinking land, known as subsidence, has occurred for decades in California because of excessive groundwater pumping during drought conditions. New NASA data show the sinking is happening faster than ever.
NASA obtained the subsidence data by comparing satellite images of Earth surface over time. Over the last few years, InSAR radar observations from satellites and aircraft have been used to produce maps of subsidence with very high accuracy. For this study, researchers from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) analyzed satellite data from Japanese radar (2006 to 2010) and Canadian radar (May 2014 to January 2015), and then produced subsidence maps for those time periods.
High-resolution InSAR data were also acquired along the California Aqueduct by NASA radar (2013 to 2015) to identify and quantify new, highly localized areas of accelerated subsidence along the aqueduct that occurred in 2014 that may be causing serious damage to the system.
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