Lake Observations by Citizen Scientists and Satellites

The Lake Observations by Citizen Scientists and Satellites (LOCSS) project is designed to help us answer one question: how does the amount of water stored in lakes around the world vary? We ask citizen scientists to send us text messages of water level, read from simple rulers installed in lakes. We combine this data with measurements of lake area from satellite images to measure variations in lake water storage. We will use the resulting data to help us improve the science we can do from current and upcoming NASA satellite missions, especially the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, which will launch in 2022 (http://swot.jpl.nasa.gov).