At KSL we love to see advances in our field. We’d like to highlight this paper by Mao et al., in Nature Communications (https://lnkd.in/gZxFTqZE), which uses seismic data to monitor groundwater levels.
It’s a novel approach that doesn’t require a pin cushion of wells; they use changes in the velocity of seismic waves to infer information about the amount of saturated media and thus groundwater levels. Their analysis of the data showed seasonal trends, as well as trends related to groundwater policy.
This is such a neat method, and it will be exciting to see how it gets used! A great summary of the paper can be found here: https://lnkd.in/gMB38xyd
𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀:
• Monitoring GW is needed as more areas become reliant on it due to climate change related droughts
• Traditionally, this is difficult and expensive with drilling etc
• Study uses seismic data to monitor GW; analysing seismic wave velocities can be used to calculate how much water is stored underground
• Don’t need to wait for an earthquake – can use records of seismic ambient noise, as Earth is always vibrating – these are recorded by seismic stations and contain a huge amount of info
• Ability to use records mean they can back-date GW levels
• Trends found: seasonality, and depleted in the last 20 years (more taken from than can recover)
• Trends also reflect GW abstraction policies – shows that well-managed pumping strategies have a big impact
• Cost-effective
* note KSL was not involved in this research; we just think it’s really neat.