Asia’s high-mountain ‘water tower’ is losing 24 billion tonnes of groundwater annually, new research finds

Groundwater reserves beneath High Mountain Asia (HMA) often called the 'Asian water tower' are depleting at an alarming rate, according to a new satellite-based study. The region provides water that supports farming, cities, and ecosystems in more than a dozen downstream countries and is a critical resource for hundreds of millions of people. But as per researchers, groundwater storage is declining by about 24.2 billion tonnes each year in the area, said a report by Science Daily.The research was carried out by Prof. Shudong Wang of the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science (AIRCAS). The team sought to overcome to major obstacles to understanding groundwater in the region: limited on-the-ground data and the extremely complex mountainous landscape. The findings were recently published in Environmental Research Letters. The research was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China and the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).Two decades of changeIn order to develop a clearer picture of what is happening underground, the researchers created an artificial intelligence (AI) powered assessment model that combin...