Conferència doctorat: ”Soil Moisture on Planet Earth” - Jeffrey P. Walker - 23/06/2010

“Soil Moisture on Planet Earth”

Jeffrey P. Walker - Department of Civil Engineering - Monash University - Australia.

Data: 23 de juny de 2010

Hora: 12:00

Lloc: Aula Merit - Edifici D5 – Campus Nord

Abstrac:

Although conceived about 30 years ago as part of NASA’s “Mission to Planet Earth”, the routine monitoring of temporal and spatial variation in the Earth’s soil moisture at global scale is only now on the verge of becoming a reality.  In November 2009 the European Space Agency launched the first-ever satellite dedicated to the measurement of soil moisture, known as the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission.  However, the data from this satellite need to be validated using detailed field campaign data, and techniques must be implemented to increase the spatial resolution and depth of this soil moisture information.  Using a unique airborne simulator, the pre-launch soil moisture retrieval algorithms for SMOS have been extensively tested using detailed ground measurements and airborne observations from a series of intensive field campaigns undertaken in Australian soil moisture observatories.  Moreover, an extensive validation campaign has just been undertaken in the Murrumbidgee soil moisture observatory, representing a typical slice of Australia.  By accurately mapping the spatial variability across an area comprising more than 20 independent SMOS pixels, this extensive airborne campaign provides not only the first, but likely also the most comprehensive validation of observed brightness temperatures and derived soil moisture from the SMOS mission.  Once validated, the soil moisture monitoring information that this satellite affords will be used to constrain numerical model predictions, thus providing a real-time soil moisture monitoring and prediction capability for Australia, leading to improvements in weather prediction, flood forecasting, drought monitoring, water accounting and agricultural productivity.

Biografia:

Jeffrey P. Walker received the B. Surv. and B.E. (Civil) degrees from the University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia, in 1995, and the Ph.D. degree in environmental engineering from the same university in 1999.

He then joined the Hydrological Sciences Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, as a Visiting Scientist for two years, before joining the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. He is internationally recognized as a Leader in the fields of soil moisture remote sensing and data assimilation, using state-of-the-art models, airborne remote sensing infrastructure, and data assimilation techniques.