Our September 18 Moos lecture will take a look at groundwater supplies from space. (Just think how this would have blown our grandparent’s minds…) The topic has made us a little more attentive to other remote sensing methods looking at water. This one comes from the NASA’s Aquarius aboard the delightfully named Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas . It measures moisture in the top two inches of soil . It’s year-old data of low resolution, but still manages to show how much of the upper midwest is a relative oasis compared to lands further west. http://www.livescience.com/46816-aquarius-instrument-map-soil-moisture.html