Aridification across the Colorado River Basin is not only decimating the region’s major waterway, it is also triggering “critical losses” in groundwater supplies, according to a new study from Arizona State University.
The researchers, who relied on more than two decades of data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites (GRACE) and GRACE Follow-On, published their findings Tuesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The study reviewed snow, surface water, soil moisture and groundwater in the Colorado River Basin, which spans Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Researchers determined that basin-wide, groundwater storage has seen a 27.8 million acre-foot loss since 2003 — enough water to fill an empty Lake Mead to capacity.
