Finding water
Green in the dry season
Summary
Shows the places around your village that stayed greener than their surroundings in the driest weeks of summer 2025 (15 July – 31 August). Data from the Sentinel-2 satellite (~80 m). Forest, settlements, water and irrigated fields are kept apart. It is a clue to shallow groundwater, not proof.
Around your village
What do the colours on the map say?
- Dark green: clearly greener than its surroundings. Places that stay clearly greener than their surroundings in the driest weeks of summer: reed beds, stream banks, spring surroundings, damp meadows.
- Green: slightly greener than its surroundings. A smaller difference; on its own a weak hint.
- Grey: not compared. Forest, settlements, water surfaces, snow and irrigated fields; these can stay green in summer, but not because of shallow water, so they are kept apart.
- Blank and dotted: blank is as dry as its surroundings or drier; dotted means no data (cloud, water surface or outside the border).
One of the places to look when researching a well or borehole site. It is a clue to shallow groundwater, not proof. Greenness may also come from irrigation, spring water, shade or snowmelt; the irrigation map is incomplete. Only an on-site geological survey gives a firm answer.
Method: late-summer greenness from satelliteSentinel-2 · ~80 m · summer 2025
Measure: from the low-cloud satellite images of 15 July – 31 August 2025, the vegetation greenness (NDVI) of every place was measured; pixels with cloud, shadow, water or snow were dropped and the median of the remaining images was taken. Each pixel was compared with the median greenness of the surrounding area. Forest, settlements, water, snow (ESA WorldCover 2021) and irrigated fields (GMIE-100) were not compared and are shown apart.
Classes: dark green = greenness (NDVI) at least 0.15 above the median of its surroundings and itself at least 0.30; green = difference at least 0.08 and greenness at least 0.25. The surroundings are the 5 km × 5 km area around the place. The village row gives the shares within 1 km of the village.
Period and resolution: 15 July – 31 August 2025; Sentinel-2 resampled to ~80 m on a 3 arc-second grid. One square is about 90 m × 90 m; small spring surroundings may not show.
Limits: one summer's images only. The irrigation map (GMIE-100) is based on the dry months of 2017–2019; irrigation and orchards opened later may look green. On high plateaus the greenness may come from snowmelt. The "Will I find water on my land?" likelihood does not use this measure and has not changed.
Source and attribution: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2025 · © ESA WorldCover project 2021 / Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021) processed by ESA WorldCover consortium · Zanaga, D., Van De Kerchove, R., Daems, D., De Keersmaecker, W., Brockmann, C., Kirches, G., Wevers, J., Cartus, O., Santoro, M., Fritz, S., Lesiv, M., Herold, M., Tsendbazar, N.E., Xu, P., Ramoino, F., Arino, O., 2022. ESA WorldCover 10 m 2021 v200. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7254221. · Tian, F., Wu, B., Zeng, H. vd., 2025. GMIE: a global maximum irrigation extent and central pivot irrigation system dataset derived through irrigation performance during drought stress and machine learning method. Earth System Science Data 17, 855. doi:10.5194/essd-17-855-2025. Veri: Harvard Dataverse, doi:10.7910/DVN/HKBAQQ (CC0 1.0). Licences: Sentinel-2 free and open (attribution required); WorldCover CC BY 4.0; GMIE-100 CC0. Comparison and classes computed by the site.
Related: Where water gathers · Water sources nearby