Drought and an ailing aquifer were topics of conversation when NASA scientists visited with farmers in the Texas High Plains.
For many longtime cotton farmers in the Texas High Plains, the 2026 drought sparked flashbacks to harvests of the past. Miserably dry seasons forced farmers in America's largest cotton-producing region to abandon large portions of their dryland crop, including 72 percent in 2022 and 66 percent in 2011.
"This is the first year that we've had cotton completely die," said Lacy Cotter-Vardeman, a farmer based in Lubbock County whose family has worked the land there for several generations.
Brown, parched crops and vacant plots dominated the landscape on September 9, 2026, when the OLI on Landsat 8 captured the image above. In contrast, much greener landscapes prevailed on September 22, 2025, when the sensor captured an image of the same area during a more typical year with a relatively healthy harvest.
With groundwater scarce in the High Plains aquifer, many farmers in the region have started irrigating just one-half or one-third of their center-pivot fields, explained Tillery Timmons-Sims, an agricultural conservationist who owns land in Brownfield, Texas, and used to grow cotton.
Some, like Double Lakes and Mound Lake, are large, but most of the more than 19,300 playa lakes in the Texas High Plains are small, less than 30 acres.
According to U.S. Geological Survey data, the water table across much of Lubbock County has dropped by between 25 and 100 feet since 1950, around when people began drawing large volumes of water from the aquifer to irrigate.