Advancing Water Security and National Preparedness Through Earth Science Observations and the Earth Science Workforce

Abstract U.S. civil spaceborne assets represent the forefront of engineering innovation across remote sensing domains such as gravimetry, thermal radiometry, imaging spectroscopy, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), and synthetic aperture radar (SAR). When acquired from the vantage point of space, these measurements often offer frequent observations that are critical for providing insights into monitoring and understanding Earth's carbon, energy, and water cycles—across the hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere. Critically, they enable global‐ and regional‐scale assessments of national security relevant variables, which inform various activities across the food, water and energy sectors. Despite their immense potential, these Earth observations data sets remain underutilized, primarily due to significant workforce shortfalls in key technical capacities such as geodesy, remote sensing, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). Here, using water security as an example, we (a) elucidate the relevance and potential of Earth observations for national and water security; (b) assess the state of knowledge regarding workforce needs; and (c) discuss strategies to maximize the contributions of the Earth science workforce to reinforce water security capabilities.