[cosc-grad-students-list] Title and Abstract of Dr. Tianxing Chu's Research Talk

[Li, Longzhuang]

Hi, Colleagues and Friends,

  The title and abstract of Dr. Tianxing Chu's research talk are as follows. Hope to see you all this Friday at 1:00 pm.

  Thanks,

Longzhuang



Estimating land subsidence and relative sea-level rise along the Texas Coast
Coasts are where the land meets the sea, forming dynamic and complex ecosystems that offer unique habitats for a vast variety of marine animals and plants. In addition, 10% of the world's population live in coastal areas that are less than 10 m above sea level. However, global sea-level is rising at an unprecedented rate in recent decades largely due to glacier/ice-sheet melting and ocean warming expansion, which is referred to as the absolute sea-level rise (ASLR). The combination of vertical land motion (VLM) and ASLR leads to a faster sea-level rise relative to the land, which is referred to as the relative sea-level rise (RSLR). The Texas Gulf Coast is one of the leading hotspots subject to VLM and/or RSLR issues in the United States. It is of vital importance to keep tracking land-water interaction along Texas coastlines to inform the decision-making process for pertinent stakeholders.
Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have long been used to monitor long-term and accurate VLM through a continuous GNSS (cGNSS) observation network. Similarly, tide gauges (TGs) have widely been used to measure RSLR through continuously monitoring the heights of the surrounding water levels. However, the densities of their observation networks are often limited while the land-water interaction may vary spatially. Thanks to recent development of satellite geodesy technologies, changes of sea surface height can be measured in the ocean with satellite radar altimetry (SRA), and large-scale high-accuracy land deformation can be estimated with interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR).
This study aimed at providing improved capability for monitoring RSLR and VLM along the Texas Coast in response to increased demands to support coastal resilience and sustainable development efforts. Galveston, Texas, was selected as the study areas being a typical city experiencing substantial subsidence relative to the sea along the Gulf Coast. Observations obtained from GNSS, TGs, InSAR and SRA were processed and leveraged for estimating the VLM and RSLR. The preliminary results suggested that fusing data from these sources has great potential to improve and complement VLM and RSLR monitoring results stemmed from single data sources.
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