No More Hydro-Secrets Revisited: GRACE, Groundwater, and Geopolitics

Last 31 January 2011 I posted an item titled, No More Hydro-Secrets? Implications for Transboundary Water Resources Conflict Management. In it, I described a revealing visit to the University of Oklahoma where I saw some amazing work being done by Dr. Yang Hong and his team:

Perhaps the most serendipitous aspect of this visit was my last appointment on Saturday morning with Dr. Yang Hong, another U of AZ hydrology PhD (Soroosh Sorooshian’s student) and his doctoral student, Humberto Vergara. Hong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science (CEES) and is working with NASA developing rainfall-runoff models and other tools and assessing stream discharge using remotely-sensed (satellite) data. 

What Hong and Vergara showed me was quite provocative. I’m not talking so much about the scientific aspects, but the management and political implications. What if you could know your neighbor’s – friend or foe – hydrology: stream discharges, rainfall-runoff characteristics, water balances, groundwater depletion and storage, etc.  And what if your neighbor knew your same information? Transboundarywater management and negotiations might be a little different than they are now. Might be hard to hide data or present faulty information.

Yep. a game-changer, all right! I then mentioned the GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) groundwater information:

We have already seen how GRACE data provided information on the groundwater depletion

in India and the response from some Indian officials (read more about GRACE here).

All the above reminded me  of a situation a decade or so ago when I was involved with three riparians on a surface water project. I naively suggested that we ought to consider groundwater as well. Boy, did the walls go up, especially from one riparian who had plenty of good-quality groundwater and did not want to share data. End of discussion.

We still have a ways to go but I suspect we will get there sooner than we think. Dr. Hong told me that his rainfall-runoff model predictions have an unacceptable level of uncertainty in watersheds with areas under 10,000 square kilometers (about 3900 square miles). And then there is the issue of ground-truthing remotely-sensed data. I can hear someone denigrating remotely-sensed data by saying, "Those aren't real data."

But in the near future, resolving and managing transboundary and other water conflicts might have a different dimension, thanks to our eyes in the sky.

Now comes a post by Dr. James (Jay) Famiglietti, the 'GRACE Guru', at the Ecocentric blog (originally posted at Water 50/50) about the geopolitical implications of GRACE data: Spin Cycle: Will Changing Global Hydrology Throw the Geopolitical Machine Off-Balance?

Here is a video showing how GRACE works:

  

Famiglietti was recently named the 2012 Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer by the Geological Society of America, which honors outstanding achievement in hydrogeology.

Great stuff - give his post a read.

"Consider this my global water challenge. If we don’t start getting our acts together on this today, I truly believe that we will see the emergence of hydropolitics on the world scene as a driving force behind new strategic alliances, economic realignment, and as a key determinant of international security." - Jay Famiglietti

Comments

[Boris]

This is a very promising direction, however, it does not replace any hydrological study, special regional hydrology. The conceptual model for this kind of research will be much appreciated.