Earth and Climate Sciences

Tamlin Pavelsky ‘01 and Camryn Kluetmeier ‘21.5 at the Waimakariri River in New Zealand

 

NASA’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography Mission: A New Satellite for Measuring Earth’s Surface Water

Water is both our greatest resource and the source of our most destructive hazards, including floods and droughts. It is surprising, though, how little we know about how water is distributed globally and how that distribution is changing in time. Over the last 20 years, NASA and its partners from France, Canada, and the UK have been developing a new satellite mission designed to measure the world’s surface water in oceans, rivers, lakes, and wetlands in unprecedented detail. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission was launched on December 16th, 2022 and has been collecting data on the elevation, extent, and storage of water around the world ever since. It has allowed us to track water levels in millions of lakes, has enabled us to see river flow from space, and has allowed us to measure ocean circulation with a level of detail never seen before. It has even revealed the bathymetry of the world’s oceans with about three times the accuracy of all other data ever collected. 

 

The story of SWOT is exciting, and Middlebury grads have played key roles in its development. Tamlin Pavelsky ‘01, now a professor at the University of North Carolina, is the lead hydrologist for the mission. Camryn Kluetmeier ‘21.5, a researcher in Tamlin’s lab, has led the collection of field validation data in New Zealand, Alaska, California, and beyond. Together, they will tell the story of how SWOT was conceived and implemented, how they have validated its accuracy, and the first scientific results that have begun to emerge from the mission. 

 

ECSC Alumni Panel Discussion

• Askja Volcano, Iceland

Dr. Patrick Whelley

“Explosive Volcanism on Mars”

Dr. Patrick Whelley is a geologist who studies volcanic and aeolian processes and products on terrestrial planets. His work uses a combination of remote sensing and in-situ observations. He has a BS and MS from Arizona State University and a PhD from the University at Buffalo, SUNY and currently works a research scientist with the University of Maryland on a co-operative agreement at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In the field, he collects high-resolution topographic data using a terrestrial laser scanner. The data inform volcanic mapping and provide ground-truth for remote sensing measurements. Patrick uses remote sensing data to characterize explosive volcanic stratigraphy on Mars. His work has implications for volcano hazard mapping, on Earth, and for interpreting volcanic histories of the terrestrial planets

Lunch will be provided.

• Brooks Range of Alaska

Geobiology of the Cryogenian and Ediacaran Periods

Dr. Justin Strauss

The Arctic Ocean remains the last major ocean basin on the planet whose tectonic origins are still debated. This is largely a function of the remoteness of the region, the general lack of shipborne geophysical data due to perennial ice cover, and other geological complexities, such as the presence of extensive volcanic overprinting from the Cretaceous High Arctic large igneous province. In this talk, I will present updated geological data from the Alaskan margin of the Arctic Ocean, specifically the Brooks Range of northern Alaska, to provide new insights into the tectonic development of the Arctic Ocean.

Lunch will be provided.