Remote sensing estimates of supplementary water consumption by arid ecosystems of central Argentina

A diagnostic tool is proposed to characterize water balance in arid regions, aiming also to improve identification of inflow dependent ecosystems and their management under demanding pressures of land use and climate change. Introduced in this paper is an ecological and satellite based approach for exploring impacts of external water supplies on arid ecosystems, focusing on the Central Monte desert and its water supplies from the Andean Cordillera, in Argentina. The research suggests satellite-based approaches that rely on ecological principles for estimating the water balance of drylands could have great benefits in areas with poor ground information availability