Alan Buis 818-354-0474 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. News release: 2009-194 Dec. 14, 2009 NASA Data Reveal
Major Groundwater Loss in California's Heartland The full
version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www
.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-
194&cid=kintera_release_2009-194 PASADENA, Calif. - New space
observations reveal that since October 2003, the aquifers for
California's primary agricultural region -- the Central Valley
-- and its major mountain water source -- the Sierra Nevadas --
have lost nearly enough water combined to fill Lake Mead,
America's largest reservoir. The findings, based on data from
the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate
Experiment (Grace), reflect California's extended drought and
increased rates of groundwater being pumped for human uses, such
as irrigation. In research being presented this week at the
American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, scientists
from NASA and the University of California, Irvine, deta