Seminar: Tamlin Pavelsky – UNC-CH

UNC-CH’s Department of Marine Sciences is proud to host a guest seminar by Tamlin Pavelsky. This event is scheduled for Wednesday, September 23rd, at 12:30 pm. This seminar is remote only and will be broadcast live online via Zoom (Meeting ID: 991-4917-3565).

Presenter Affiliation: Professor of Global Hydrology, Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Title: Using Big Data Remote Sensing to Understand the World’s Rivers

Abstract: Rivers and streams organize the world’s surface water into defined networks that provide resources, generate hazards, and influence civilizations. On many maps, rivers are merely lines, despite the fact that the properties of rivers vary tremendously depending on the climatic and physiographic properties of their contributing basins. With the advent of widely available, multitemporal satellite imagery over the entire globe, we can now examine how the properties of rivers vary on global scales. In combination with traditional field-based approaches, we can understand how human and natural processes affecting rivers are reflected in these properties and how the nature of rivers is changing in response to human alteration of the climate and landscape. In this talk, we will explore how new measurements of river properties such as width, ice cover, and suspended sediment concentration, derived from satellite imagery, can help us to address long-standing science questions about the hydrologic, geomorphological, and biogeochemical functions of rivers.