During his sabbatical on a Fulbright Scholarship in Qatar, Professor Sayed Bateni collaborated with Dr. Essam Heggy and others on the joint Qatar Foundation (QF) and NASA OASIS (Orbiting Arid Subsurfaces and Ice Sheet Sounder) mission. Their objective is to design a satellite mission using radar technology to discover and monitor underground sources of fresh water (aquifers) in the sand dunes and ice sheets of the driest places on earth. The current sources of aquifers in the deserts are being rapidly depleted by the needs of local communities. As a member of the OASIS science team, Professor Bateni focuses on using remotely sensed deep-layer soil moisture observations in data assimilation and machine learning approaches to estimate groundwater level in arid areas.
To find out more about the NASA OASIS mission, visit: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/us-qatar-partnership-aims-to-find-buried-water-in-earths-deserts
Image: The OASIS project seeks to study fresh water aquifers in the desert as well as ice sheets in places like Greenland. This illustration shows what a satellite with a proposed radar instrument for the mission could look like. Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech (from Oasis Project Study, 23 Sept 2020).