This story is really out there. Way out there... in outer space, in fact... getting the big picture, you might say. First, a little background... much of the western United States does not have enough rainfall to sustain modern life. In places like Idaho, entire communities exist only because there is a river nearby from which they can extract water... and without irrigation there would be no agriculture. The legal right to take water out of the river is as valuable as land itself. But how do you determine how much water is being used on a given piece of property. That single issue has been the source of civil discord for generations and speaks to larger global issues like world hunger. Then along came a helpful new tool... Mapping Evapotranspiration from Satellites!
