Nebraska Water Usage

  • Released Wednesday, October 14, 2015
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Animation begins with a wide view of the entire United States and then zooms down to an area in Nebraska where water usage studies have been done using Landsat-8 satellite data. The camera slowly pans across the area first showing true color Landsat-8 data, then transitioning to temperature data (in shades of orange and violet), then to ETRF (shades of green), ending with an extrusion of water use data (shades of blue) where the camera pulls back to show the entire area of interest.

Water managers in 15 states across the U.S. currently use Metric technology to track agricultural water use. Metric measures evapotranspiration (ET)—the amount of water evaporating from the soil and transpiring from a plant’s leaves. The thermal band data on Landsat satellites allows water specialists to measure ET. This process cools the plant down so irrigated farm fields appear cooler (bluer) in Landsat satellite images. The latest evolution of METRIC technology—an application called EEFLUX, will allow anyone in the world to produce field-scale maps of water consumption, including on mobile devices. Metric was developed in the early 2000s and to date EEFLUX has been introduced to the California Department of Water Resources, the California Water Control Board, and the World Bank.

Print resolution still of the Nebraska water use study area.

Print resolution still of the Nebraska water use study area.

Landsat-8 temperature colorbar.

Landsat-8 temperature colorbar.

Evapotranspiration Ratio (ETrF) colorbar.

Evapotranspiration Ratio (ETrF) colorbar.

Water usage colorbar.

Water usage colorbar.

Credits

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NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Wednesday, October 14, 2015.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 12:07 AM EST.

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