Nawaraj Shrestha is a geospatial science specialist in the School of Natural Resources.

Water is available in only very limited quantities in the arid and semi-arid regions. Much of the water in the form of precipitation is lost as evapotranspiration while contribution from snowmelt and subsurface processes such as groundwater are not readily measurable. As water is critical in drylands, measuring water availability in space and time is important in understanding and management of drylands. Water availability assessment in the drylands using surface water alone does not reflect important water sources in drylands such as irrigated water, soil moisture conditions due to precipitation, snow melt, and sub-surface flow. Mesic vegetation responds rapidly to change in environmental condition and provides an integrated response to available water in the drylands. Mesic vegetation including wetlands, wet meadows, riparian habitats, playas, and high-elevation rangelands provides valuable insight on water availability in the drylands. We use time series of satellite image archives and cloud computing to measure the inter- and intra-annual water availability in the drylands.

Bio Sketch:
Water is available in only very limited quantities in the arid and semi-arid regions. Much of the water in the form of precipitation is lost as evapotranspiration while contribution from snowmelt and subsurface processes such as groundwater are not readily measurable. As water is critical in drylands, measuring water availability in space and time is important in understanding and management of drylands. Water availability assessment in the drylands using surface water alone does not reflect important water sources in drylands such as irrigated water, soil moisture conditions due to precipitation, snow melt, and sub-surface flow. Mesic vegetation responds rapidly to change in environmental condition and provides an integrated response to available water in the drylands. Mesic vegetation including wetlands, wet meadows, riparian habitats, playas, and high-elevation rangelands provides valuable insight on water availability in the drylands. We use time series of satellite image archives and cloud computing to measure the inter- and intra-annual water availability in the drylands.