{"id":4548,"date":"2019-08-14T11:23:39","date_gmt":"2019-08-14T08:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=4548"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:28","slug":"we-use-satellites-to-measure-water-scarcity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/08\/14\/we-use-satellites-to-measure-water-scarcity\/","title":{"rendered":"We Use Satellites To Measure Water Scarcity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/profiles\/emad-hasan-773516\"><strong>Emad\nHasan<\/strong><\/a><strong> and <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/profiles\/aondover-tarhule-773518\"><strong>Aondover\nTarhule<\/strong><\/a><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today, more than 700 million people around the world&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/news-room\/fact-sheets\/detail\/drinking-water\">drink\nwater from unsafe or untreated sources<\/a>, such as wells, springs\nand surface water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About half of these people live in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact,\nin more than 30 African countries, fewer than 20% of the people&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/water-scarcity\">have access to safe\ndrinking water<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ipcc.ch\/site\/assets\/uploads\/2018\/03\/climate-change-water-en.pdf\">Climate\nchange is likely to worsen the situation<\/a>&nbsp;by making water\nless available in some locations and by changing the amounts and timing when\nwater is available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Determining whether a region has sufficient water to satisfy the needs of people who live there is a complicated and imperfect process. Our research team has developed a new approach\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/rs11080904\">to measure water <\/a>scarcity by using satellites hundreds of miles in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>How to measure water scarcity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To estimate water scarcity, hydrologists, the people who study\nthe science of water, build what they call a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/naturalsciences.ch\/topics\/water\/water_balance\">\u201cwater\nbudget.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They estimate all of the water entering the country \u2013 from\nrivers, rainfall, groundwater and man-made sources \u2013 and then subtract all of\nthe water exiting the country. This produces an estimate of the available water\nin the country or region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By dividing the available water by the population in the region,\nhydrologists can tell whether there is sufficient water to meet people\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Generally, in the U.S.,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/water.usgs.gov\/edu\/qa-home-percapita.html\">the\naverage person uses between 300 and 400 liters of water per day<\/a>&nbsp;for\nbasic needs \u2013 like drinking, sanitation, bathing and food preparation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Globally, a country is said to experience a serious water\nscarcity problem if it has&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fao.org\/nr\/water\/aquastat\/maps\/TRWR.Cap_eng.pdf\">less\nthan 500,000 liters of water<\/a>&nbsp;per person per\nyear, to meet both their daily needs and agricultural needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This water budget process works if accurate data are available\nfor each source of water. However, in many developing regions, such as Africa,\nthe data required to calculate water budgets are not available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet Africa critically needs accurate information on its water\nscarcity status. As the second most populated continent, Africa is projected to\nhave&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.prb.org\/2013-world-population-data-sheet\/\">a\npopulation of 2.4 billion by 2050<\/a>, approximately double\nthe current estimated population. Such rapid population growth will exert\nconsiderable stress on the continent\u2019s available water resources, worsening the\nalready acute water scarcity situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, assessing the potentially available water resources is\nessential for the future<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/we-use-satellites-to-measure-water-scarcity-120055\">. Read more\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Emad Hasan and Aondover Tarhule Today, more than 700 million people around the world&nbsp;drink water from unsafe or untreated sources, such as wells, springs and surface water. About half&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}