Satellite data show Indian water stocks shrinking
Groundwater depletion raises spectre of shortages.

Unsustainable water use in India is threatening agricultural production and raising the spectre of a major water crisis.

Matthew Rodell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues used data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites — operated by NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) — to determine how groundwater levels are changing in the Indian states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, which includes the national capital of New Delhi.

Their research, published online in Nature this week (M. Rodell et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature08238; 2009), found gravity anomalies suggesting a net loss of 109 cubic kilometres of water — equivalent to a mass of 109 billion tonnes — from August 2002 to October 2008. The amount lost is double the capacity of India's largest surface-water reservoir, the Upper Wainganga, and almost three times the capacity of Lake Mead in Nevada, the largest reservoir in the United States.
A second study using GRACE data, by scientists at the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, has found that the most intensively irrigated areas in northern India, eastern Pakistan and parts of Bangladesh are losing groundwater at an overall rate of 54 cubic kilometres per year, consistent with Rodell's results (V. M. Tiwari et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. doi:10.1029/2009GL039401; in the press).

Groundwater depletion in northwest India is a known problem, but Rodell's data suggest that the loss rate is around 20% higher than the Indian authorities have previously estimated. Rear more...

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