Uncertainty in global groundwater storage estimates in a Total Groundwater Stress framework

Alexandra S Richey; Brian F Thomas; Min-Hui Lo; James S Famiglietti; Sean Swenson; Matthew Rodell

doi:10.1002/2015WR017351

Uncertainty in global groundwater storage estimates in a Total Groundwater Stress framework

Water Resour Res. 2015 Jul;51(7):5198-5216. doi: 10.1002/2015WR017351. Epub 2015 Jul 14.

Authors

Alexandra S Richey¹, Brian F Thomas², Min-Hui Lo³, James S Famiglietti⁴, Sean Swenson⁵, Matthew Rodell⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of California Irvine California USA.
² NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena California USA.
³ Department of Atmospheric Sciences National Taiwan University Taipei Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of California Irvine California USA; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena California USA; Department of Earth System Science University of California Irvine California USA.
⁵ Climate and Global Dynamics Division National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder Colorado USA.
⁶ Hydrologic Sciences Laboratory NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt Maryland USA.

Abstract

Groundwater resilience is defined and quantified with remote sensing from GRACETimescales of aquifer depletion are assessed as a Total Groundwater Stress ratioThe volume of usable global groundwater storage is found to be largely unknown.

Keywords: aquifer storage; depletion timescales; groundwater resilience; remote sensing; total stress.