NASA Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science, 2022-2025, S. Werth (PI), M. Shirzaei (Co-I), G. Allen (Co-I), E. Andrews (Co-I)

This multidisciplinary project involves ten experts from the U.S. and Italian universities, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and the lead of a consulting company specialized in services that enhance tribal sovereignty and safeguard tribal heritage. The proposed research investigates the natural and anthropogenic processes, such as groundwater pumping, climate- and land-cover change, and sea-level rise, and evaluates the associated socioeconomic impacts on the Chesapeake Bay on the U.S. East Coast. Spatially and temporally variable groundwater extraction, driven by various forcing factors, results in a poorly understood coastal land elevation change, exacerbating the negative impacts of sea-level rise through increased flooding hazards and saltwater intrusion. It can further impact surface water quality through alterations in flow paths and water chemistry. Despite its importance and impacts, groundwater remains a hidden and highly vulnerable resource, managed less restrictedly than surface water. Also, increased surface water withdrawal impacts water quality by introducing thermal, nutrient, and other contaminant pollution into water bodies and altering downstream flow regimes. To quantify the present-day and future status of (ground)water resources, the vulnerabilities of, and socioeconomic impacts on local communities, this project will aim to co-produce knowledge and innovations through an academic-government-stakeholder partnership and leverage advanced Earth observation data and modeling techniques. We will focus on the Chesapeake bay, home to eleven federally and/or state-recognized indigenous tribes. The tribal communities represent ancestral cultures, an essential part of our nation's history, and an integral element of the region’s communities today. Their populations live along coasts, rivers, and on floodplains and are affected by relative SLR (RSLR) and increased flooding and saltwater intrusion threatening the freshwater supply. Nevertheless, they often have no role in the decisions that directly impact them, increasing their vulnerability and widening environmental inequality. This project is specifically designed to partner with such communities and authorities to co-produce knowledge, tools, and approaches that are practical from law and policy perspectives and enable communities to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change and improve their environmental security. To this end, we will consider an iterative framework: (i) Through discussions with the DEQ, future scenarios for water management will be designed, including net usage, location, depth of injection and pumping wells, and integrated water management approaches. (ii) We will examine the feasibility of scenarios created under future projections of climate, land cover and use, and population growth through a Machine Learning approach and report results to authorities for possible refinement of scenarios. (iii) We will examine the hazards associated with each scenario that impacts stakeholders through physics-based experiments and discuss them with authorities and stakeholders for possible refinement of scenarios and the creation of relevant laws and policies. This will involve outreach efforts to indigenous people and traditional cultural heritage community members as well as the implementation of hazard mitigation strategies in communication with stakeholders such as local, state, and federal governments, tribal leaders, residents, non-profits, and/or business owners. In summary, the project will integrate the traditional disciplines of the Earth sciences and innovative and complementary use of models and data with law and policy analysis and stakeholder engagement while approaching environmental and climate justice improvements using Earth observations.

NASA GRACE/FO Science Team, 2021-2024, S. Werth (PI), M. Shirzaei (Co-I)

This 4-year project focuses on the Southwest (SW) US and aims at improving the spatial resolution, and temporal sampling of Total Water Storage Changes (TWSC) obtained from GRACE/GRACE-FO. We will fuse independent estimates of TWS based on hydrological model simulations as well as elastic loading inversion of deformation data with the GRACE-based TWSC observations. The results from this project will provide essential insights into the complex interaction between terrestrial water cycle, aquifer dynamics, gravity changes, and surface deformation. It will also secure the continuity of TWSC, in between both GRACE missions. An accurate water budget closure and a spatiotemporal characterization of its components will be beneficial for understanding the impact of climate variability, climate extremes, and human water consumption on water resources. The project's dataset outcome are of high importance for water managers in arid regions, like the SW, which are susceptible to overdraft of water resources on and below the surface by growing population and economies.

NASA Earth Surface and Interior, 2017-2022, S. Werth (PI), M. Shirzaei (Co-I), Y. Fu. (Co-I)

States across the southwest USA, in particular California, are currently undergoing a severe drought on large spatial extents, which causes shrinkage of the surface and groundwater resources. Thus, comprehensive monitoring and modeling schemes to enhance drought management and mitigating the negative impacts at various spatial and temporal scales is essential. The research effort will focus on the acquisition of a high-resolution 3D deformation map obtained through InSAR processing of SAR images acquired by various satellites (2003-present) and GPS measurements over the state of California. Results from this project will assess the capabilities of InSAR to monitor aquifer systems and perform a joint analysis of the deformation and gravity data to obtain maps of TWS variations, on various scales ranging from 100s of m to 1000s of km. We will combine the archive of gravity data obtained by GRACE satellites (2002-present) with high resolution 3D deformation data based on InSAR and GPS measurements over the state of California. A combination through a Bayesian inverse modeling scheme will provide multi-scale estimates of water storage variations and its uncertainty. Thus it delivers unique constraints on the timing and extent of hydrological mass fluxes, useful for probabilistic drought forecast and management. Results from this project will assess the capabilities of InSAR in combination with GRACE and GPS data to provide high resolution spatiotemporal observations of TWS variations.