Depleting The Fertile Crescent
When water stops falling from the sky, humans will often search for it below ground. That has been the case over a broad stretch of the Middle East where observations by NASA's twin GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) satellites show a sharp decline in underground freshwater reserves over the last decade. Following a drought in 2007, hundreds of new wells were drilled in the Tigris and Euphrates river basin to obtain water for drinking and agriculture. The basin occupies 339,688 square miles of the Middle East, covering parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. By late 2009, the region lost 73 million acre-feet of water—equal to 60 percent of the volume of the Dead Sea—due to pumping from underground reservoirs. NASA scientists say this extraction is happening at a much faster rate than rainfall is restoring the groundwater. The visualization shows GRACE measurements of water gains and losses in the Tigris and Euphrates river basin from January 2003 to December 2009.
Satellite observations reveal groundwater losses in the Middle East.
The colors indicate changes from the average water supply between Jan. 2003 and Dec. 2009. Blue represents big gains; red represents big losses.
The first signs of a decline in groundwater reserves are seen in Sep. 2007.
By Feb. 2008, groundwater reserves were restored to a degree.
Measurements show a severe depletion in groundwater reserves by Sep. 2008.
By Dec. 2009, groundwater reserve losses are visible across nearly the entire region.
The GRACE satellites detect water gains or losses by measuring changes in Earth's gravity.
For More Information
See NASA.gov
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Animator
- Trent L. Schindler (USRA)
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Video editor
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
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Producer
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
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Scientists
- Katalyn Voss (University of California, Irvine)
- Jay Famiglietti (University of California, Irvine)
- Matthew Rodell (NASA/GSFC)
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Writer
- Patrick Lynch (Wyle Information Systems)
Release date
This page was originally published on Tuesday, February 19, 2013.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:52 PM EDT.
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