Groundwater Monitoring using Observations from NASA’s GRACE Mission

This NASA ARSET training webinar provides an overview of the GRACE missions, groundwater data availability, and their applications in the monitoring and management of water resources.

Groundwater accounts for about 30% of global freshwater and supplies drinking water and irrigation for nearly one-third of agricultural land worldwide. Because of this reliance, monitoring groundwater is essential for effective water and land management. NASA’s GRACE and GRACE-FO missions, in collaboration with the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), have provided large-scale estimates of terrestrial water storage since the mid-2000s by measuring changes in Earth’s gravity field using twin satellites. These observations are widely used to detect groundwater depletion and to support drought and flood monitoring.