Landsat: A Space Age Water Gauge
Agriculture consumes a great deal of water. As demand for water increases, the pressure's on to make sure every drop counts.
Water specialists Rick Allen, Bill Kramber and Tony Morse have created an innovative satellite-based method that maps agricultural water consumption. The team uses Landsat thermal band data to measure the amount of water evaporating from the soil and transpiring from plants' leaves. Evapotranspiring water absorbs energy, so farm fields consuming more water appear cooler in the thermal band. The Landsat observations provide an objective way for water managers to assess on a field-by-field basis how much water agricultural growers are using. Landsat is a joint program of NASA and the US Geological Survey.
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Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
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Agricultural Aquatic Sciences Agricultural Engineering Agricultural Plant Science Agricultural science Agriculture Atmosphere Atmospheric Water Vapor Crop/Plant Yields Earth Earth Science Edited Feature Evaporation evapotranspiration Farm Structures HDTV Irrigation Land use Landsat Narrated Soil Moisture/Water Content Soils Voice Over Talent
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Stock Footage Courtesy of Visionaries, Inc.
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Video editor
- Stefanie Misztal (UMBC)
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Producer
- Jennifer A. Shoemaker (UMBC)
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Narrator
- Jefferson Beck (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Videographer
- Jennifer A. Shoemaker (UMBC)