Complete Transcript

Narration:

Transcript:

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You know years ago, I used to

roll my eyes at all this new

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technology farms were using. But

boy, it didn't take long for me

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to realize just how vital all

that data is to agriculture.

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We live on a water planet. But

in practice, freshwater can be a

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finite resource. These same

farmers that are responsible for

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the food that reaches your plate

have been fighting an

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increasingly uphill battle. And

that's water resources.

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I've been farming for 31 years,

and I take the business of

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getting what we grow to

consumers' kitchens very

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seriously. My nephews just

started farming and running

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things and my biggest concern

for their futures that we're

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going to need to grow more with

less. Over the years, I've seen

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hotter days with less rain. So

agriculture has to figure out

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how to get as much per drop of

water as we can. When there's

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not enough precipitation getting

to fields, farmers need to

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irrigate their crops with

outsourced water from

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reservoirs, canals or

groundwater. And to properly

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manage all of those resources,

it takes data. A series of

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satellites called Landsat

provides data on surface water,

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while NASA's GRACE missions

observe groundwater. And GPM

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keeps a close eye on rain, snow,

droughts and floods.

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Data is the key. If we can

measure it, we can quantify it,

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we can solve it.

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Together. NASA's missions and

satellites are powering

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solutions through free and open

data like OpenET. To grow a

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crop of corn in a drought, it

takes 90 days of pumping water

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from the Ogallala Aquifer at

30,000 gallons an hour. To put

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that into perspective, we're

using enough water to fill 98

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Olympic sized swimming pools.

But with NASA water management

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data, I go online, I can see

when I'm over or under applying,

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and that's extremely important

when you're saving 5 million

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gallons of water.

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Water is a finite resource on

Earth and our mission at NASA is

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to understand how it's changed

in the past, observe the present

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and forecast the future