The Pittsburgh Geological Society
presents

Hydrology from Space Water Quality and Availability from Lake Erie to the Middle East

by Dr. Richard Becker, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at The University of Toledo

PRESENTATION:

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.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY:

Dr. Richard Becker is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at The University of Toledo. His work focuses on utilizing satellite remote sensing techniques, combined with traditional field based measurements and to gain insight into geologic process. This has included using satellite imagery for tectonic plate reconstruction, land subsidence, land use change, aquatic water quality, and water availability.