Satellites Map Human Effects on the Water Cycle
In the app: the whole story at your level, listening, the quiz and the word cards.
The same story at six levels
How the first sentence reads at every level, from A1 to C2.
- A1
NASA scientists studied changes in the water cycle.
- A2
NASA researchers studied changes in Earth's water cycle and terrestrial water storage.
- B1
A study by NASA researchers has mapped changes in Earth's water cycle and terrestrial water storage.
- B2
A study by NASA researchers mapped changes in Earth's water cycle and terrestrial water storage from April 2002 to November 2025.
- C1
Because shifting water and ice are heavy, scientists can track where water is gained or lost on land by measuring gravity from space.
- C2
Water and ice are heavy, and as they shift across the continents, they tug at the spacecraft passing overhead.
Key words
Words from the B1 text, with their meaning.
- terrestrial
- relating to the Earth or to dry land
- reservoir
- a large natural or artificial lake used as a source of water supply
- successor
- a person or thing that comes after another and takes its place
- groundwater
- water that collects below the surface of the earth
- glacier
- a large mass of ice that moves slowly over land
- native
- growing, living or produced originally in a particular place
Rewritten with AI from facts reported by NASA Earth Observatory. Read the original for the full report.