ISTerre seminar

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Remote hydrology: water through the lens of distant machines

Wednesday 3 September 2025 - 11h00

Adrian Borsa - Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD
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Climate change is stressing the American West's century-old system of water storage and conveyance, through longer and more intense droughts and periods of exceptional rainfall and flooding. Nowhere are these challenges more acute than in California’s Central Valley, which produces 25% of the USA's agricultural output on climatologically marginal farmland. Intense management of mountain discharge into the Central Valley, along with oversubscribed rights to surface water, have resulted in unchecked exploitation of the Valley’s groundwater resources and impeded initiatives to use occasional surface water surpluses for aquifer recharge. New regulation has sparked interest in better information on groundwater availability. Here at Scripps, our lab uses remotely sensed observations of Earth’s gravity and surface motion to infer the dynamics of the hydrological system that feeds the Central Valley aquifer. These techniques track the evolution of mountain water storage at various timescales, and they reveal how this stored water enters and flows through the Central Valley aquifer. Effective management of groundwater resources in the Central Valley will require adoption of data-informed policies, and our hope is that our insights into Central Valley hydrology will prove useful to this end. BIO: Adrian Borsa is a professor at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His research describes how Earth’s surface is deforming at timescales of hours to decades, linking observed change to processes ranging from earthquakes to climate change. Dr. Borsa took an atypical route to science, beginning with a B.A. in Government, an M.A. in International Relations, and an early career in international business focused on Japan. He received his PhD from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2005 and was posted at the US Geological Survey and at NSF’s national geodetic facility before returning to Scripps in 2012. Dr. Borsa is currently the General Secretary of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and a member of the science team for the US-India NISAR synthetic aperture radar mission.

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Organizing team : Cycle sismique et déformations transitoires

Amphithéâtre Killian, Maison des Géosciences, 38400 Saint Martin d'Hères

Informations de visio :

https://univ-grenoble-alpes-fr.zoom.us/j/92956342169?pwd=atRbmXkR3hcDaXyMw5rsnD8AbkUqdG.1