Water resources continue to be critical issue underpinning health and sustainable development across the world. This is especially true in regions where allocation and management of transboundary water resources poses political challenges, such as in the Nile, and the Tigris-Euphrates. It is also evident across state boundaries, with examples coming from water quality and management issues in a water abundant area, the Laurentian Great Lakes. Recent advances in remote sensing can provide great insight in these areas. With the widespread availability of data from a number of recent satellite sensors (e.g. Landsat, MODIS, GRACE, GPM, combined with traditional airborne and UAS sensors) with increasingly longer continuous data acquisition, it is possible to answer fundamental water quality and availability questions. In this presentation, I address using hyperspectral satellite, airborne and UAS images to asses water quality in Lake Erie, specifically harmful algae blooms (HABs) that caused major water problems for the Toledo area in the summer of 2014. I then move to a broader scale and look how changes in climate and land and water use affect globally significant wetlands in Africa (Sudd), and the Middle East (Iraq), using a combination of GRACE gravity and MODIS visible data.

See our speaker's biography for more information.

Our meetings start at 6:00 pm with a social hour, dinner is served at 7:00 pm and the presentation begins at 8:00 pm. Dinner will cost $30.00/person, dinner for students is $10.00; checks preferred. For this month's meeting, reservations should be emailed to pgsreservations@gmail.com, please title as "PGS Dinner Reservation", by noon, Monday, Sept 19th. Meeting will be held at the Fosters Restaurant, Foster Plaza Building 10, 680 Andersen Dr, Greentree. See map for our meeting place. Suggested attire is business casual. Students and guests are welcome, you need not be a member to attend our meetings and its okay to just drop by for the speaker presentation at 8 pm.

Directions:
From Pittsburgh: Parkway West to Green Tree-Crafton Exit. Bear left at exit and left again onto Mansfield Avenue West. Follow Mansfield West to the 2nd traffic light. Turn right onto Holiday Drive and proceed up the hill to Foster Plaza Building 10.

From Airport and I 79: Parkway West towards Pittsburgh, exit at Green Tree-Mt. Lebanon Exit. Turn left onto Greentree Road, make left at 1st traffic light onto Mansfield Avenue West. Follow Mansfield West to the 2nd traffic light. Turn right onto Holiday Drive and proceed up the hill to Foster Plaza Building 10.

Or go to http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&sll=40.440676,-80.007248&sspn=0.127773,0.22007&q=foster%27s+restaurant+and+catering&near=pittsburgh+pa&latlng=40440556,-79996111,5411451826638810477 for a map.

October 19, 2016 Dr. Richard Becker, Associate Professor, Dept. of Environmental Sciences, University of Toledo

November 16, 2016 Dr. Frank J. Pazzaglia, Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sci., Lehigh University

December 21, 2016 Spouse and Significant Other Night

January 18, 2016 ASCE Geoinstitute and PGS Joint Meeting

Yes, dinosaurs walked on the land and left behind their footprints and bones, but unfortunately this evidence has been eroded away long ago. It is difficult to imagine the enormous amount of soil and rock that has been carried away by weathering processes in the 60 million years since the end of Cretaceous time. Scientists have estimated that a layer of rock over a mile thick has been eroded since the beginning of the Mesozoic Age and with it all traces of the dinosaurs.