Public Invited To Free Lecture At NASA Goddard: Detecting Landslides From Space

GREENBELT, Md., Jan. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The public is invited to a free event in January to experience "Finding the Slippery Slope: Detecting Landslides from Space," by Dalia Kirschbaum, research physical scientist in hydrological science at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md.

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The talk is part of the Gerald Soffen Lecture Series and will be held at the Goddard Visitor Center on Wed., Jan. 9, 2013, at 7 p.m. EST (doors will open at 6:45 p.m.). The free talk is about one hour and will end with a question and answer session. Registration is requested online at: http://tinyurl.com/8uafmrl. Pre-registration will be open until Jan. 7, 2013.

In just two days in August 2010, more than 2,000 people died from an onslaught of mud and debris that inundated their villages in rural India and China. Every year landslides kill thousands of people due to intense thunderstorms, hurricanes and monsoons, yet no operational landslide prediction system exists for these hazards. This talk will explore the muddy issue of using satellite data to characterize and predict rainfall-triggered landslide hazard and risk on Earth's surface.

Through merging topography data and satellite rainfall information, this research has developed new techniques to estimate where and when landslides may happen globally. Building upon the existing Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, Kirschbaum will describe how we can link rainfall patterns we observe at the global scale to what we experience in our own back yards. With an immense database of NASA Earth science data at our fingertips, we can piece together satellite information to complete the puzzle in better understanding landslides and their impacts worldwide.

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