The Colorado River basin has lost huge volumes of groundwater over the past two decades, according to a new report from researchers at Arizona State University.
Researchers used data from NASA satellites to map the rapidly depleting resource, which is a major source of water for California. The Colorado River supplies roughly one-third of all water for Southern California cities and suburbs. It also supports a large farming industry in Imperial and Riverside Counties.
The river basin, which includes seven Western states, has lost 27.8 million acre-feet of groundwater since 2003. That’s roughly the volume of Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir…