Landsat’s Role in Managing Water Resources
Water is essential for life. A third of Earth’s populace has unreliable access to clean water. With current population growth and environmental trends, the U.N. Environmental Program estimates that 1.8 billion people will face water scarcity by 2025. Water means survival for people and other species we rely upon to thrive, making proper stewardship of our water resources vital. Good decisions require good data. Since 1972 the Landsat series of satellites has been providing such data. Landsat-based decisions on how to manage limited water resources have impacted millions of people worldwide. From finding water for refugees in arid nations to reducing pollution in our national waterways, Landsat enables decisions that directly help people.
![A map showing a region in Bangladesh where over-irrigation has likely occurred in the two weeks prior to June 4, 2023. Those areas appear in red.](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IRASmap.png)
Satellite Data Helps Bangladeshi Farmers Save Water, Money, Energy
Satellite data are providing information to Bangladeshi farmers about how much water they are using, how much they have, and how much their crops need.
![A beaver head and body just above a body of water that looks green.](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/nasa-beaverrewildingvideo-thumbnail.jpg)
Researchers Become “Beaver Believers” After Measuring the Impacts of Rewilding
Satellites like Landsat are quantifying how beavers can have an outsized and positive impact on local ecosystems.
![Gingham Waterhole, Gwydir Welands at sunset. A dead tree is reflected in the water with a blue-purple sky behind it.](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/GinghamWaterhole_th.jpg)
Landsat Insights: Wetland History in Your Hand
Practitioners managing the wellbeing of wetlands have a new tool at their disposal. The Wetland Insight Tool, developed by Geoscience Australia, provides a visual summary of 35+ years of wetland dynamics.
![2022 ET estimate for fields around Corcoran, CA.](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/OpenET_CorcoranCA-2022.png)
Ten Years of TIRS: Data for a Thirsty World
Landsat 8 very nearly flew without a thermal infrared sensor. This is the backstory of how TIRS made it onto Landsat 8.
![Meandering Lake Powell as seen by Landsat 8 in 2014. Dark blue deep waters change to green-grey shallow waters from image left (west) to right (east).](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1-Lake_Powell.width-th.jpg)
NASA-Led Project Tracking Changes to Water, Ecosystems, Land Surface
Merging data from multiple satellites, OPERA can help government agencies, disaster responders, and the public access data about natural and human impacts to the land.
![The fractured front of Crosson Ice Shelf](https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Landsat9-CrossonIceShelf.png)
Influencing Factors: Satellites Help Decipher the Fate of West Antartica
An international team of researchers has combined satellite imagery and climate and ocean records to obtain the most detailed understanding yet of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – which contains enough ice to raise global sea level by 3.3 metres – is responding to climate change.