The Navajo Nation is arid and vast — nearly 30,000 square miles. Hydrologists struggle to collect much-needed measurements of rainfall there. But now they have help from NASA satellites.
Navajo hydrologists and NASA scientists teamed up to create a the Drought Severity Assessment Tool. It generates maps that compare recent rainfall with historical data, to see if a particular region is unusually dry.
“With that, you’re able to look at drought regimes specific to the Navajo Nation, which previously was not available,” said Vickie Ly, research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California.
The tool can focus on ecological regions or government boundaries called chapters. Carlee McClellan, Navajo Nation hydrologist, said the nation has “a wide range of desert land to high plateaus, grasslands to mountains. With such a wide diversity, we need a tool that’s able to focus on all areas of the Navajo Nation, so we can hone in on areas that are most affected.”
The new software tool could be used to assess which areas need emergency aid. Currently emergency drought dollars are allocated equally to the nation’s 110 chapters.