Seminar: Dr. Margaret Kalacska

Please join us as we welcome Dr. Margaret Kalacska, a Professor in the Department Geography at McGill University for a seminar titled "Global assessment of water resources and aquatic diversity - a remote sensing approach". Coffee will be served.

Abstract

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened on Earth facing environmental and anthropogenic pressures often surpassing their terrestrial counterparts. High-resolution temporal data regarding the change of surface water is lacking at a global scale. We created three global surface water extent datasets from the Landsat satellite imagery archives from the mid 80s to present. At finer time scales, our results capture previously recorded events such as the drought of 2010 in the Brazilian Amazon and the extent of flooding in 2012. We also show cases where surface water has continued to decrease over time (e.g. Madagascar). We discuss implications of our findings in terms of the imperilment of endemic aquatic fauna and potential mitigation measures.