TechnicalGIS

Monitoring Lake Mead Drought

A look at the dramatic fall in Lake Mead's water level during the 2022 drought.

By Published 1 min read

Cracked, dried mud on Lake Mead's exposed lake bed during the 2022 drought.

Key takeaways

  1. A photograph of Lake Mead's cracked, exposed lake bed during the 2022 drought.
  2. To put a number on it, the Sentinel-2 tutorial measures the lake's open water from 2019 to 2025 in Python.

Cracked, dried mud on Lake Mead’s exposed lake bed during the 2022 drought.

Update (2026): want to measure the shrinking lake yourself? Our new tutorial, Measuring Lake Mead’s shrinking shoreline with Sentinel-2, STAC and Python, computes the water extent from 2019 to 2025 in Python.

Data for this article

Licences and formats for each source are listed in the GIS data sources catalogue.

Season condition answer for Marsabit, Kenya, October to December 2022, with rainfall below normal and vegetation the lowest since 2001

Article Remote Sensing

Free community tools: season condition and flood impact for any district

Two free tools for any district: is this season's rain and crop growth better or worse than usual, and where did it flood and how many people live there? Worked examples from Marsabit, Kenya, in 2022 and Feni, Bangladesh, in 2024.

Beginner 5 min read