Delta-X Media Day

Narration: Kathleen Gaeta

Transcript:

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River deltas and wetlands play a

pivotal role in protecting

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coastlines from storm surge and

rising seas.

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But as sea level continues to

rise instead of an inputs are

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reduced, these vast areas of

land are drowning. NASA's

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Delta-X mission set out to

determine which parts of land

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will survive and continue to

grow, which parts will be lost

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and why.

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Specifically, the mission is

looking to answer the question

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what are the hydrological and

ecological processes responsible

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for both the resilience and

vulnerability of river deltas to

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relative sea level rise or RSLR?

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To do this, field teams deploy

by land and boat to measure the

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flow of water and the sediment

transport across the region.

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An airborne campaign also sets

out to take large scale

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measurements to estimate water

and sediment flow as well as

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vegetation production.

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Planes outfitted with three

different instruments will

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collect this important data via

remote sensing. One of the

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instruments is NASA's airborne

visible infrared imaging

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spectrometer, or AVIRIS-NG. It's

flying on a King Air B200

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aircraft.

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I helped build the instrument

and it's an Imaging Spectrometer

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as we fly along, we've imaged a

swath and every pixel of the

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swath, we collect the full

reflectance spectrum. And with

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our instrument we can see into

the water, we can get the

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chemical composition of the

vegetation and get a whole lot

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of very important environmental

factors. With each image, we

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rent airplanes with a hole in

the floor. That's the whole big

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deal about this type of a survey

aircraft, the goes into end

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where the light goes into that's

reflected off of the surfaces on

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the bottom of the plane. And

there's a little narrow glass

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window where we look out of with

the instrument when we see like

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a slit projected on the ground

so that as the plane goes along,

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that slit builds up a map or an

image of what's going on. We're

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looking at the instrument

Imaging Spectrometer vacuum

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vessel optics, CRO coolers, we

will have an operator up in this

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seat, and we will be looking at

the screen and we have another

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scene over here for a person

that's working the navigation

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system that helps us get to show

the pilots where we want to be

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flying over the on the ground.

And they have a screen that goes

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up on the windshield that they

can look at to see where our

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target is relative to the plane

so they can steer the plane

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cleanly and accurately over the

for the target site.

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The UAVSAR instrument or the

uninhabited Aerial Vehicle

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synthetic aperture radar will

measure how land features have

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changed over time.

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The AirSWOT instrument focuses

on the natural properties of our

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surfaces, gathering data for

things like water elevation

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mapping, and surface

characterization.

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Together these measurements make

up models that scientists can

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then use to understand and

forecast land gain or loss in

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deltas.