Season 3/Episode 6: Jay Famiglietti: Groundwater, adaptation, and monitoring water from the sky

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Written By Stacy Raine

Jay Famiglietti

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Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and a Global Futures Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, joins John to talk about groundwater management and the state of water in the American west. Jay has extensive experience measuring and tracking groundwater and water security issues, including using satellites to help develop advanced computer models to track how freshwater availability changes around the globe.

Show Notes

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START (JAY FAMIGLIETTI INTERVIEW)

 

[MUSIC]

 

JOHN:  Welcome to Audacious Water, the podcast about how to create a world of water abundance for everyone.  I'm John Sabo, director of the ByWater Institute at Tulane University.  On today's show, groundwater, climate adaptation, and monitoring water from the sky.  My guest is Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and global futures professors in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University.  Jay has extensive experience measuring and tracking groundwater and water security issues, including using satellites to help develop advanced computer models to track how freshwater availability changes around the globe, which you'll hear us talk a lot about in this show.  Coming up I talk with Jay about the state of water resources in the American West, how to make water usage reductions easier for farmers, and the next big thing when it comes to water management in the west.  Jay, welcome to the show.

 

JAY:  Thanks so much for having me, John.

 

JOHN:  Yeah, this is fun.  Welcome back to the U.S.

 

JAY:  It's good to be here.  I felt like I was on the moon there for the last five years.

 

JOHN:  Okay, so I was going to start the podcast with maybe a softball, which is kind of, like, when you were a kid did you ever imagine that you'd be doing what you're doing now?

 

JAY:  No.  When I was a kid I wanted to be a veterinarian.  I've had a course-correction along the way.  Actually what happened was I got to college and realized that pre-veterinarian medicine was extremely hard, and I, like, didn't know how to study.  I was a, you know, classic first- and second-year, you know, student, just partied a lot until I figured out what I really wanted to do.  And then I rolled into - I needed an extra class one year and I rolled into a geology class.  And it's great; that was it, you know?  So that's sort of the path that took me here.

 

JOHN:  Well, now you're back in the West, and I imagine you continued to do some of the same research when you were up in Canada that you were doing before when you were in California.  But given that you're in Arizona now what are your research priorities?  What are you interested in working on?

 

JAY:  Well, you may know about the funding that we got from Governor Ducey on his way out of office.  He gave ASU around $40 million to focus on water and water innovation.  And so that's really dominating, you know, the whole team there.  And if, you know, you were still there you'd be right in there.  You'd probably be in charge of it.  So that's become a big focus.  It's not what I intended when I moved there.  I thought I was going to continue doing this global and regional work with satellites, really understand how water security is at risk around the world.  But I think it's great that we have this opportunity to really make a difference in Arizona.  Because as you know, you know, it's really going to be challenged now with the cut-backs on the Colorado River, increasing pressure on groundwater, and also this mindset that Phoenix can just keep growing and growing.  And I think it's finally - it's a wakeup call really for the city that we can't just keep going on with infinite, uncontrolled growth when there's not enough water to support it all.

 

JOHN:  Let's talk about that a little bit.  Let's zoom out a little bit.  Like, you've talked about, written about the Colorado River a lot, and water resources in the West in general.  What's wrong about the way we think about Colorado River water and water resources in the West in general?

 

JAY:  I think in general most people--although this changed over the last few years--I think most people just assume that it's not a problem that's going to impact them in their lifetimes, that there's enough water.  But, you know, we know the story - I mean, the river is over-allocated.  Allocations were done at a - you know, during a historically wet period rather than an average period.  And even if they'd been done in an average period things are drying out anyway.  So, you know, the big challenge is now how - you know, what can we do - you know, there are only so many levers that we can play with.  There's a supply lever and there's the demand lever.  There's not much we can do on the supply side.  The supply is decreasing.  So all the work has to be on the demand side, and that's hard.  So that to me is the challenge.  And just like everywhere, agriculture uses all of the water - or, you know, 80% of the water that's withdrawn around the world is used for agriculture.  So it's not like it's us vs. agriculture.  It's just when you're looking at budgets, you know, you have to look at the - you have to be practical about it and you go for the big numbers.  Just like your family budget, right?  If you need to save money you're probably going to, you know, try to, whatever, not live in the biggest house, and not drive, you know, the Maserati.  And, you know, you're probably going to go with a Volkswagen and, you know, whatever, a smaller house.  You know, not a perfect analogy but those are the big numbers, right?  So it doesn't really matter, I think, like, if you go to Starbucks every day and spend a couple of dollars on a cup of coffee.  What does matter is those bigger expenses.  And that's the way it is with water--the bigger expenses are agriculture.  Yet we have to eat.  So we have to - and we have a growing population.  So we have to figure out how to do this more efficiently.  And also the challenge I think is doing it in a way that doesn't really hurt farmers.  We can't just tell the farmers, "Go do this.  Go improve your irrigation efficiency."  We have to have incentives and low-cost loans, and respect the fact that they grow our food and they have these water rights.

 

JOHN:  So let's talk about the farm piece.  I totally agree with you--you know efficiency on the farm is where to start.  But it's expensive and we can't expect, you know, agriculture to shoulder that blame and also, you know, pay for that total cost.  So how do you do that?  Is there a way to connect cities to farms and do that, or what are the ways?

 

JAY:  Yeah, I just think in terms of - I’m not an economist, but I think incentives are really important.  And those incentives can be in the form of tax breaks.  And if we're thinking specifically about, let's say, shifting to, I don't know, drip-irrigation instead of flood irrigation, or some other kind of irrigation that's not flood irrigation, which is really inefficient, really uses a ton of water...  So, you know, what sort of incentives, what sort of low-interest loans, what sort of tax breaks are we going to give our farmers so that they can make this transition?  We also have to show them that it's economically feasible and make it economically feasible.  And that could also be in terms of crop prices.  There could be opportunities for water markets, trading water amongst local farmers.  I don't mean water markets in the sense of, like, "Hey, let's have a water stock in the stock market and drive the price up high," I just mean that maybe, you know, if farmers can monetize their water rights to be...  You know, we need a lot of tools in that toolbox to get the farmers on board.  But I think the biggest thing is - and they have to be making the same amount of money, maybe even more, but at least the same amount of money.  They can't really be penalized for making this switch.  Because it's, you know, it's not - none of us would be happy, you know, being made to do that, and so we have to make it feasible for them.

 

JOHN:  I think that's pretty wise.  You know, one of the things that I hear from lawyers and some of my colleagues at ASU is nothing's going to get fixed until the rights are adjudicated, until people know what they have.  And sometimes I feel like there's a little bit of reticence to know what you have, because then you might not have as much as you thought you did or something like that, right? 

 

JAY:  Yeah, I mean, I think that's interesting.  You know, my fear about the adjudication process is that it, you know, it'll take a century, you know?  It'll take a long time.  And we need things that are going to work now.  And I think we're in a good spot I think in Arizona with Governor Hobbs--she really seems to be really on point with respect to water.  I'm sure you've been following what she's been doing there, especially with the - you know, the most recent thing is the Saudi leases, right?  She's ended the leases for the Saudi farms that are growing alfalfa and, you know, sending it back to Saudi Arabia.  So she's terminated that.  But she came straight in and said, like, in her first week, "Hey, we really need to take a look at the groundwater management in Arizona."  So, you know, I like to - been saying now, this is sort of the second time for me where I've experienced these what I've been calling "moments," right, the moments of...  You've got the crisis of California.  Like, we'll use California as an example.  And I'm speaking specifically about this period, say, between 2011 and 2015 when Governor Brown was in office, Felicia Marcus was the chair of the State Water Resources Control Board.  We had a colossal drought at that point, like, the worst ever.  Of course it's gotten worse since then, but at that point it was, like, the worst ever.  You know, the media was on point.  Everyone was doing conservation.  And then we had this research that was coming out that was showing this big picture about how bad off things really were.  And it was that sort of combination of having a proactive government and the media being on point, and people across the state, because the media was on point, people across the state really understood what was going on.  And it was in that timeframe, 2014, they were able to pass the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.  And, you know, I think we're in the same - a similar situation in Arizona with Governor Hobbs in office.  She's very water-focused.  She has her Water Policy Advisory Board.  She has her Water Policy advisor.  She's doing - you know, she ended the Saudi leases, which I just mentioned.  She's predisposed towards doing this.  And we get this big chunk of money at ASU so, like, we have the ability to actually work with the state agencies and get things done.  So that's sort of what I'm hoping to help accomplish over the next few years.

 

JOHN:  Sounds like a bright spot.  Let's talk about some other bright spots.  One of the things that I like to compare is California and Arizona, in terms of groundwater management.  Arizona's had groundwater management since 1980.  Governor Babbitt passed the Arizona Groundwater Management Act then, an it was thought to be...  I mean, we look back on it now as something visionary.  I also say that we need that next visionary thing, right?  Like, it worked but we need something more at this point.  What do you think that is?  Is it more Groundwater Management Act?  What is it?

 

JAY:  I think the biggest thing is that a big part of the state's...  So you know me, John, I'm just learning about this stuff.  But when you look at the active management areas the groundwater - the places in Arizona that are actually - where groundwater's actually managed, it's a lot of the population, but it's only about 25% of the area.  And that's a lot of the state that is unmanaged, and that's a lot of agriculture.  So to me that's the next frontier I think.  And I’m saying this based on, you know, our research with using the NASA GRACE satellite that we use to track groundwater storage changes from space.  So I can see that, you know, there's a lot of water being lost outside of those active management areas.  So to me the next visionary thing - and I think, you know, Governor Hobbs is on track to at least be open to this.  And, you know, she's talking about revising the Groundwater Management Act.  To me the next frontier is bringing the rest of the state under control. 

 

JOHN:  That'll be interesting I think, and I agree with you completely.  I think it'll be interesting in this case for Arizona to watch California doing that, right?  Like, because California's doing the whole state.

 

JAY:  Yep.  So California's done it, right?  It's carved up the state into--I don't even know the final number--somewhere around 200, which is too many, managing the equivalent of the active management area's so-called "Groundwater Sustainability" agencies. 

 

JOHN:  Interesting.  All right, let's shift gears and go to the Mississippi.  You know, I'm in New Orleans now, and when I moved here my only hesitation was I've spent my whole life on water insecurity, and now I'm going to a place - or drought - and now I'm going to a place where there's way too much water.  And that turns out that's not the case.  I mean, if you look at the Mississippi as a whole...  For example, the New York Times had a recent piece on groundwater, the groundwater crisis, right?  And I'm writing in Forbes on that right now.  And what I was surprised about, there are two big areas in the Mississippi Basin that are experiencing--maybe more--groundwater loss.  What's going on with that and what can we do about that?

 

JAY:  So I'm not as familiar with the Mississippi Basin, but I will say, you know, when you look down around the southern part of the river and the alluvial aquafers there's always been a tremendous amount of groundwater pumping.  I think people don't really recognize it because, you know, what happens sometimes--we don't have to get too much into the hydrogeology--but when you pump groundwater and you're close to a big river like the Mississippi you're actually drawing in river water.  So it sort of, you know, goes unnoticed until you get to times like these when, you know, there's some drought issues.  So, you know, just like everywhere else there's a tremendous amount of agriculture, there's a tremendous amount...  You know, I think the New York Times article was great, by the way, for raising public awareness.  So, you know, I think it comes down to really people don't really understand that groundwater is this sort of mystical thing, right?  You know, and I don't think people really understand that.  I mean, that makes sense.  You know, we understand it but still there's a lot we need to learn.  So the general public I think, you know, is probably a little shocked to see that there's water issues there.

 

JOHN:  Right.  I also think it's ironic that you...  I mean, I did a road trip with my daughter last year from the mouth to the headwaters of the Mississippi, and in the delta you have to try really hard to see the river because it's leveed everywhere, right?  And then there's, like, corn everywhere, which makes sense--it's the corn belt, right?  And all of that is irrigated by groundwater.  And so it's not surprising when you look at the scale of it and the levee, and you say, "Where is that getting its water in the dry season?" right?  It's coming from underground.

 

JAY:  I think that's true of a lot of our agricultural regions.  And, you know, similar experience that I've had in the west in California, when you leave L.A. and you're trying to head up into the central valley and there's mountains to cross, and you come down, that area's called the "Grapevine."  So you come down out of the Grapevine, it's just, like, I-5 and State Route 99 sort of come together and split off.  Anyway, you come down into the valley and you see the valley on a clear day, you can see the valley, and you don't see any water, right?  In fact, in a lot of southern California you don't really see any water.  So you know it's coming from groundwater.  But especially the scope of agriculture in our food-producing regions is so huge.  And when you don't see a big river nearby anywhere, you know, you realize it's coming from groundwater. 

 

JOHN:  Okay, let's - another observation as a newbie to New Orleans and to the Mississippi Basin, when I first moved here we had a hurricane and we had massive amounts of rain, and nobody was talking about drought, which I know a lot about because I come from Arizona.  Last two years we've had record low Mississippi River levels.  And almost every year that happens - well, the last two years it's happened people have been asking me, "Well, is this the new normal?  Are we going to have a low Mississippi?"  And my first reaction was, "No, this is the Mississippi."  But then I thought about it, you know, half the river is in the arid West, half the basin.  And the line that used to demarcate the transition between a humid or almost-humid climate to arid was 100th meridian, and now it's 95th I think.  It's moving east.  Talk to me about new normal and what that means.

 

JAY:  Yeah, so that's good.  You know, I hadn't really thought about - hadn't thought about that at all, especially with the Mississippi and half of it, you know, being in the arid West.  So yeah, I mean, the West is aridifying, and we've got higher temperatures.  Higher temperatures mean the atmosphere can hold more water, that means that there's more of a demand from the atmosphere for water on the ground, meaning through evaporation.  So those higher temperatures and the higher ability of the atmosphere to hold more water means that evaporation is going to increase.  And so that's leading to this - what we're calling "aridification."  You know, it's not drought; it's a long-term process.  And it's - you know, it's wreaking havoc on our water resources, and I think we need to be really thinking...  And this is where I think - so podcasts like this are really important for getting the message out that, yeah, this is the new normal.  I mean, sure, we're going to have our climate oscillations just like, you know, earlier we were talking about fires in Canada and smoke across the prairies; that's the new normal.  And not enough people are talking about that, not enough people are talking about the expansion of the dry regions, and we need to because, you know, that's the way things are going.  As an aside, this just sort of connects to some research that we're doing that actually looks at the expansion of the drying parts by satellite.  So course-resolution globally.  And I think it's something like .6 million, so 600,000 square kilometers a year is the trend in drying regions.  I mean, that adds up.

 

JOHN:  It does add up.

 

[MUSIC]

 

JOHN:  Up next Jay and I discuss the wildfires in Canada and what that signals, the need for water adaptation, and how smaller private-sector satellite companies are contributing to water research from the sky.

 

JOHN:  To your point on fire, one of the things that...  You know, you and I spend our lives looking at maps and data, and integrating space and time.  But I think for those that don't do that it's just another fire except for when it's in Canada, and then it's pretty far north.  And what I've been telling people is forests are moving north, and trees are changing.  We need to choose the forest we want to save and just accept that this is a largescale process that's going to change the face of western landscapes.  I hadn't thought about Canada before--what does that mean for Canada?

 

JAY:  [LAUGHTER] It's terrible.  It's bad news.  And it's bad news not only for Canada, but for the world.  So yes, Canada needs to come to terms with the fact that - you know, Canada as a nation, first of all, is huge.  Its temperature is increasing at twice the global average.  Where I lived in the prairies, which is the sort of south-central part of Canada--so just above the high (plains) in the United States--started warming at three times the global rate.  And the north is warming at four times the global rate.  So coming to terms - and there's profound changes--you know, it's just like the mountain West--profound changes in snow and snowpack, and same things we were just talking about, the aridification.  But it's the fire situation that is relatively new in Canada that's caught people off guard.  And so it's - part of the climatology, the forests are huge.  Canada doesn't even have - you know, the population of Canada--I don't even know what it is, but it's, like, ridic- maybe it's, like, 30 million or something--it's a sparsely-populated country.  So there's no one to really even do the forest management; they're huge.  I think it's basically impossible to manage them.  Another thing that doesn't really get talked about is, you know, that permafrost is melting and those forests are burning, and all of that carbon and methane that's stored up there is being released into the atmosphere.  And third thing that people don't talk about is carbon credits - you know, if you're a company and you're buying carbon credits, and you're going to plant more trees in Canada, those carbon credits are literally burning up, right?  So it's not working...

 

JOHN:  And I think that that - you know, the fact that forests are burning is a double-edged sword, right, because there's less uptick of CO2, and then there's the release from the smoke and the methane from permafrost, like you said.  So yeah, that's...  My next assignment after this podcast is a course on climate change and global rivers.  And we talk about these kinds of feedbacks that are negative and self-sustaining, right, that keep things moving forward in a way that we can't manage.  And unfortunately...

 

JAY:  Yeah.  And that Canadian story, it's not really part of the global narrative, but it's not even part of the Canadian narrative.  It's - I don't know what the heck is going on there, but, you know, my wife and I would be out walking the dog several times a day and, you know, you don't really see it.  You just see a little bit of a nuisance.  Part of the weather report...  It's, like, the friendly Canadians just say, "Oh, well, it's part of the situation."  No.  But it's - right, there's actually - like, it's a weather...  You know, when you look at your weather apps or, you know, you look at the news and you've got the little icon for the sun, or the rain, or, you know, cloudy, now there's a smoke one.  So, yeah, it's part of the climatology now.

 

JOHN:  All right, let's get a little bit nerdy for a sec.  Talk to us about GRACE, how it works, what it does.  Not from a super-technical point of view, but just, like, demystify it, because it's a spaceship. [LAUGHTER]

 

JAY:  Yes, it's like science fiction.  So basically like a scale - I like to say it's like a scale in the sky.  So GRACE is a NASA mission, stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment.  It has been in operation since 2002.  Actually there was a little break around 2017 when version 1 sort of ran out of battery power.  Version 2, which is essentially a copy of version 1, was launched.  It was a little bit of a gap, but we've got 20 years or so of data.  So, you know, when we think about most satellites we think, like, oh, it's a big camera up there, or it's a big telescope, or it's a big thermometer, right?  It's taking a temperature; it's measuring some kind of emissions.  And GRACE is different--it's measuring gravity variations, which have to do with weight changes on the ground.  And so think of it like this...  And the satellites are not very big.  There's two of them; they sort of look like squashed minivans.  They orbit up at about 400 kilometers--they're separated by about 200 kilometers--so they orbit over the poles.  So these two crushed minivans that are orbiting and sort of chasing each other around in a straight line over the polls...  And so as the earth is spinning around, you know, they're basically sweeping over the earth.  So that's the scale.  Well, why do I say it's a scale?  Because when there's more water mass on the ground--so, you know, big hurricane and around New Orleans or something--brings a lot of water on land.  And so the region has literally gained water weight, and that is enough, that water-weight gain, when it is enough--and so that would be about, say, the size of a big flood in New Orleans--it actually - it (sets) a gravitational tuck on those two squashed minivans flying around up there, the scale, and pulls them down closer to the Earth, right, as they fly over.  The first one flies by and it gets pulled down (inaudible) a couple of centimeters or something.  And then as it passes it, you know, relaxes back into its orbit.  And the second one comes in and the same thing happens.  And then the opposite happens when they're flying over the Southwestern United States, which is a region that's actually lost water weight so it exerts less of a gravitational tug on the satellites.  So they actually move up a little bit higher, you know, in their orbit.  And so the measurement is actually very careful measurement of the position of the scale, like the ups and downs of the scale.  Just like the scale in your bathroom, right?  You stand on it--if you weigh more, right, if you're heavier, the heavier you are the more the scale is depressed.  The more water mass is on the ground the more those satellites are pulled towards the Earth.  And so by keeping track of the ups and downs of the satellites, which we do extremely accurately--less than a thousandth of a millimeter, right; it's a sub-micron scale accuracy--by keeping track of the position of those satellites we can map out the places that are around the world that are gaining or losing water on a monthly basis.  So we do that over time.  So we see the ups and downs, but we also - because we've been doing it for 20 years we see the trends.  And that's the part that's scary is seeing those trends in these places that are drying out.  You know, we see the ice melt, we see the groundwater depletion, we see the places where flooding is increasing, where drought's increasing.  We see the Canadian stuff now that I was talking about.  We see the drying and the permafrost melting.  It's scary.

 

JOHN:  I like that description, the scale.  I've never heard that before.  I'm sure you've used it many times and I'll probably steal it from you.  I'm sure you (haven't) patented it at this point.

 

JAY:  Please, yeah - no - no, I - you know, there's even a nice little, like, a whiteboard animated video we can find.  Yes, NASA - it's not - believe me, it's not a perfect analogy, but it's basically what's happening, and I think it really helps people understand how it is that you can, you know, [quote, unquote] "see underground," see these groundwater (storage) changes.  Well, you're not actually seeing them, you're sensing the weight changes.

 

JOHN:  Right, cool.  Okay, we got the nerdy stuff out of the way.  Let's turn - we talked about a lot of scary S-H-I-T; let's turn to bright spots.  One of the things that a manager, a water buffalo from Arizona will tell you is, "Oh, we've been storing a lot of water underground, the Colorado River water."  Talk to me about that.  Is that a bright spot?  Are we going to be able to use it?

 

JAY:  Sure, yeah, I do think so.  And I think we need to be storing more water.  So yes, that's true.  We've been able in Arizona to store a fair amount of Colorado River water as groundwater.  I think it's a great use of the water.  We have to be thinking a lot about keeping that up.  Okay, so it's like you recharged a bank account, and so now what--are you going to keep, right, putting money into it, or you're just going to drain it?  So how we manage that I think is really important.  So, you know, there's the - what we call the "managed aquafer recharge," right, the replenishment side.  And then there's also, you know, the actual extraction side.  We need to be keeping up - you know, be very mindful of the balance.  This is like a bank account balance--be very mindful of that groundwater account balance and do things that we need to do to keep it at a level...  It's just like - you know, to the degree possible we want to treat it just like you would with your home budget.  You want to keep it, you know, between some levels.  You know, high level, great; low level, you know, we'd better be careful.  And try to sustain that over time.  And that's a challenge because--around the world, not just Arizona--we tend to just, you know, want to empty the bank account.  One of the issues is we don't know where the bottom is, right, and so we just keep going. 

 

JOHN:  To that point I think that's true, and we can talk more about that, but I think there's also another issue which is, is it going to be there when we need it?  Does it stay there or does it move?  And are we doing the science we need to be doing to know that we can get it back when we want it?

 

JAY:  Yeah, good question.  It may be or it may not be, you're right.  There's a lot of blind faith.  So, you know, it sounds like you're talking about the actual hydrogeology, and is this water dissipating, is it flowing out of these aquafers where it's stored?  I mean, certainly, you know, in California there's the Kern County water bank, and yeah, the water does flow out, right?  It's, like, an alluvial aquafer, and a big area of water's being banked there and, yeah, it flows away.  So you're right.  And I think that's true of a lot of stuff, John, about a lot of the questions we have, that there is a lot of science that needs to be done.  You know, more than you or I, or even our water initiative in Arizona, you know, it's more than - it's a huge problem, and it's one that really needs, you know, billions, if not trillions of dollars around the world.  I hope we can really elevate these water issues to that level.  Because certainly that's what we're doing with carbon, right?  I mean, we're spending those billions, if not trillions on carbon, and it's time to elevate water to that level. 

 

JOHN:  I agree with you completely and I think there's a parallel conversation to be had around funding for climate mitigation and climate adaptation, right?  The climate mitigation is the carbon part, and the climate adaptation is quite literally the water part, right?  Because 80% of natural disasters are water-related, including the droughts we're talking about, including hurricanes.  But adaptation is - both are underfunded, but adaptation gets only 10% of the total funding, right?  So I think that - in some ways I feel like we need to push for the general public and - yeah, the general public to understand that water fits into climate change that way.

 

JAY:  No, I agree.  I have - you know, you look at my - I should know this quote, but it's my pinned tweet on Twitter.  It's something like, you know, "water is the messenger that delivers the bad news about climate change," you know, to you, right, to your city, to your front door.  And that's true, I think a lot of people don't really recognize that.  I didn't actually know that fact about how much is spent on adaptation.  And, you know, we really need to push for this, John.  And it's people like me and you, right, that - and our colleagues, that need to be pushing and, you know, building the case, and, you know, advocating.  This is a case where advocacy I think is perfectly fine, that we need to be spending more money on adaptation.  Because if we don't, I mean, look at what just happened in, you know, the floods in Libya for example, right?  So here's a place that, you know, if you look at our GRACE maps it's just, like, just losing - so it's just dry and getting drier, and losing all this groundwater from the northwest Sahara aquafer system.  And then, boom, you know, colossal floods and, you know, so many people die.  And so that's that - you know, it's that adaptation; be prepared for that seesaw of the wet and the dry.  And there is an international-level awareness that needs to be raised.  I like the way you put it in the context of climate adaptation.

 

JOHN:  Cool.  You just mentioned a process that I think is really important: you called it a "seesaw."  I think some of our colleagues call it "climate whiplash."  It's this, you know, this alternation between extremes of wet and dry.  Talk to me about opportunities there.  Like California was flooded last year, and it has empty aquafers.  Can't we make use of that?

 

JAY:  Well, I hope; it's a challenge though.  So it's that episodic nature.  So let's think about the dry places, the dry lands and the dry regions of, say, the United States like the Southwest.  It's really a challenge to capture that.  So yes, you get - now we're getting this whiplash, this - you know, the oscillation between very dry and very wet.  And - but think about it, like, from an engineering perspective--how the heck can you sort of magically capture these floodwaters that you don't know when they're going to happen, you don't know where it's going to happen, you don't necessarily own the property, right?  And so coming to figure that out was just another, you know, area of research that we have to come to terms with.

 

JOHN:  For sure. 

 

JAY:  So yeah, it would be great if we could capture more of it.  It's just difficult for those regions.  Where are you going to do it?  How are you going to do it?  Is it even feasible?  I think it's probably feasible, we just have to actually, you know, think about ways to - almost like our emergency response, right?  Like, hey, we're going to go out and we're going to, you know, build the inflatable - we're going to fire up the inflatable dam.  I don't know.  Yeah, it's really, really a challenge, becoming more of a challenge, right?  And not just in the Southwest but, you know, the dry lands of Africa is another great example. 

 

JOHN:  All right, cool.  Let's end on a technology note.  NASA's got a bunch of cool stuff in the sky, and I'm always hearing about new missions that are going to do X, Y, and Z but I can't keep track of them, to be honest with you.  What's the new - you know, what are the newest things that are going to help us do this - you know, do the science that we're talking about, do the management that we're talking about from the sky?

 

JAY:  Well, you know, it may not be from NASA, it may be from the private sector.  So NASA's niche is really the big - the flagship mission(s).  And they're great, and they are excellent for science and, you know, somewhat in our case for water-management.  So, you know, the SWOT, Surface Water Ocean Topography mission, launched at the end of 2022.  So that's new.  We're just starting to understand what the data looked like and what they're telling us.

 

JOHN:  What does that do?  What's...?

 

JAY:  That measures the height and the extent of major surface-water bodies all over the world.  So it's measuring, you know, the heights of rivers, and it can go along profiles, so, like, along a river.  And so, you know, it can go along the Mississippi and get the height, and from that we can understand the discharge.  But it also has a mapping mode so when there's flooding, right, we can map the flood inundation.  And it's doing that globally.  So we're finally getting - kind of like, GRACE in the sense that we're finally getting this picture of storage changes.  Now it's on the surface, surface water, sort of like the waxing and the waning of the rivers, and the lakes, and the whole thing globally, like, how that water storage on the surface is changing.

 

JOHN:  It's like having discharge gauged everywhere?

 

JAY:  Exactly, that's the selling point for the mission.  It doesn't measure discharge but you can calculate the discharge from the heights.  So that's great.  Next big one is that NASA--and I don't know the launch date--but it's called NISAR, NASA India - so NASA, the American Space Agency, and the Indian Space Agency--so N-I, NASA India--SAR, Synthetic Aperture Radar.  And that could be a big one for water, too, because synthetic aperture radar has the skill, has the capabil- it's more complicated than what we call "passive microwave," but has the capability to help us understand soil moisture, help us understand canopy structure, so it'll be really, really helpful.  There's another new one - relatively new--I guess it's a few years now--ecostress, which measures (inaudible) that's on the Space Station.  Coming down - so NISAR is coming.  The next GRACE mission, which I think we're just calling the (inaudible) Change Mission, is coming who knows when.  And this is my point about NASA is that, you know, it's a political process, it's a community process, and you're talking about billions of dollars.  So it's not nimble.  But, you know, a next GRACE mission that would be higher resolution, maybe better for - in space and time, and better for water-management, better for monitoring watersheds and, you know, aquafers at smaller scales, that's - you know, that's out there probably a few years.  So NASA's not very nimble.  The private sector's very nimble.  And so there are a lot of small satellite companies that are out there that are filling this niche.  And, you know, I won't name names but--because my daughter works for one and I just had a conversation with another one yesterday about some research--but, you know, very high resolution temperature, very high resolution soil moisture, you know, like, kilometer or less.  You know, some stuff, some of the temperature products that these companies are targeting are whatever, you know, ten meters.  So what that means is you can do a much better job understanding surface temperature, understanding and calculating evaporation, which is, you know, an important water loss, especially for irrigation.  So, you know, one of the proposals that I'll be writing with one of these companies--just an internal thing; not very much money--but to try to, you know, see what we can see from satellites about farm water use.  How much water is being applied?  Maybe we can even tell what kind of irrigation is being applied.

 

JOHN:  That's fantastic.  And, I mean, it's a good place to close, and I just want to say we were just talking about adaptation research not being funded.  These kinds of missions--I think you put billions, maybe even you said trillions that we need to invest in this--but this is in that order of magnitude kind of investment for research.  And it's global, and I think the big scale is so important for these things.  So thanks for bringing that up, and I'm going to go do a little bit of Googling on those missions, and it was great to have you on the show, really good conversation.

 

JAY:  Thanks so much, really appreciate it.  Had a fun time.

 

JOHN:  Cool, thanks.

 

[MUSIC]

 

JOHN:  What an epic conversation.  It's always fun to talk with Jay, and I'm glad he's in Arizona now; they need him there, for sure.  A couple of quick threads to wrap up this fun conversation.  First, climate-adaptation research is underfunded and satellite missions are an important tool for us to push this important endeavor forward.  Second, although NASA and funding for NASA missions from the public sector is important, the private sector will become increasingly important here.  Finally, groundwater is not just a Western problem; it is a challenge across the U.S. and very central to a sustainable Mississippi River Basin, even in states that have enormous surface water supplies right next door. 

 

[MUSIC]

 

JOHN:  That's it for this episode of Audacious Water.  If you liked the show please rate or review us and tell your colleagues and friends.  For more information about Audacious Water visit our website at AudaciousWater.org/podcast.  Until next time, I'm John Sabo.

 

[0:38:51]

 

END (JAY FAMIGLIETTI INTERVIEW)

Stacy Raine
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