The NASA Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission serves as a vital pillar of NASA’s Earth Science to Action strategy, which aims to bridge the gap between complex space-based data and real-world decision-making. By tracking minute changes in Earth’s gravity, the GRACE missions (including, GRACE, GRACE-FO, and the future GRACE-C) "weigh" the movement of water across the globe, providing a unique view of hidden resources like deep groundwater and the thinning of polar ice sheets. Examples of strategic use GRACE missions data include:

• Empowering Water Management: In alignment with NASA’s goal to deliver trusted, actionable information, GRACE-FO data is integrated into the U.S. Drought Monitor. This allows farmers and policymakers to manage water scarcity and food security by monitoring hidden underground aquifers that are otherwise difficult to measure.
• Building Coastal Resilience: The mission builds bridges to end-users by precisely quantifying ice mass loss and its contribution to sea-level rise. This provides coastal planners with the "predictive capability" necessary to protect infrastructure and prepare for future environmental shifts.
• Driving Impactful Solutions: By translating gravitational anomalies into practical water-management tools, GRACE-FO embodies the shift from simple observation to direct societal impact. It ensures that NASA’s scientific breakthroughs are actively used to solve the most pressing environmental challenges of our time.

Operational Users and Applications

1 Federal Operational Monitoring Systems, Services, and Infrastructure

• U.S. Drought Monitor USDM (NDMC, USDA, DoC, NOAA, NASA): Used for streamflow forecasts and water supply, crop, and forest assessments. GRACE-FO data are assimilated into a NASA-supported hydrologic model for weekly groundwater and soil moisture wetness indicators, which is published by the National Drought Mitigation Center used as a key input to the USDM weekly reports (POC M. Rodell).
• National Geospatial Infrastructure, Assets & Planning (NGS, NOAA, NGA): Data are critical to the National Spatial Reference System for defining accurate geodetic datums and reference frames to ensure consistent coordinates that enable accurate positioning, navigation, and mapping (e.g., DGEOID2022).

2 State Water Management and Decision Support

• California Department of Water Resources (CA DWR): GRACE-FO Central Valley groundwater storage estimates are included in the semi-annual public groundwater reports (since 2024), enabling statewide groundwater assessment and management in support of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (POC: JT Reager).
• State of Texas Rivers & Aquifers total Water Storage (STRAWS) dashboard: University of Texas and Texas Water Development Board tool tracks changes in major Texas aquifers and river basins, and guides water infrastructure investments.

3 Private Sector

• Individuals and Businesses: Known users include farmers and agricultural commodity interests, energy producers, insurers, supply chain logistics consultants, and others (GRACE-FO user survey; POC M. Rodell).

4 Global Security and Capacity Building

• Coastal Planning: GRACE-FO data are used to track the processes (e.g., ice melt, land hydrology) that contribute to local sea level changes, enabling informed planning and mitigation investments (e.g., World Bank portal).
• Water and Biosphere Risk Tools: GRACE-informed groundwater indicators are integrated into WWF global risk tools used by industry and finance for water-risk and related assessments (POC: J. Kusche).
• India—Ministry of Water Resources: GRACE-informed groundwater assessments have been used in national water planning and reporting (2016; 2025).