Dara Entekhabi

MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

Biography

Dara Entekhabi is the Bacardi and Stockholm Water Foundations Professor with joint appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There he also serves as director of the Ralph M. Parsons Laboratory for Environmental Science and Engineering, and the director of the Earth System Initiative. His areas of research interest are remote sensing, linkages between climate and the water cycle, land-atmosphere interaction, and groundwater-surface water interaction.. Professor Entekhabi is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is also the Science Team Leader of the Soil Moisture Active and Passive (SMAP) satellite mission scheduled for launch in November 2014 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Abstract: Remote sensing advances and impacts to hydrologic science (past, present and future)

The understanding frameworka, paradigms and models of hydrology have been built on the foundations of traditional hydrologic observations: gauge precipitation and stream discharge. The limited information content and limited coverage of these observations have affected the evolution of the field. A ‘natural selection’ process has led to the predominance of a certain type of models as well as a certain set of guiding scientific and practical questions. Over the last two decades the skies have opened with a new type of data: ground-based and space-borne remote sensing observations. These data are not extensions of traditional hydrologic observations and provide radically different types of information. Key questions are: 1) are the paradigms, models and questions that served the discipline well when only traditional hydrologic observations were available adequate for the new era?, 2) has the community met the challenge of re-inventing itself, its paradigms and its models?, and 3) what new basic understanding and practical applied science returns await us with the emergence of new sensors and data – some specifically designed for the hydrologic science discipline?