Water, water everywhere – but how much dare we drink?

We live on an ocean planet, but depend for our survival on a plentiful supply of fresh water.  As the demands on our water supply continue to grow, catchment basins are increasingly stressed beyond their capacity to recharge, whilst the global network of in-situ measurement gauges is failing, crippling our ability to monitor this crucial resource.

Fortunately, there is a space-based technique that now allows remote measurement of inland water surfaces - satellite radar altimetry.  In this talk, Professor Philippa Berry will show how she has transformed this capability from measurement of the largest lakes to a global monitoring system, the results of which have been used by the European Space Agency.

Professor Berry obtained her Bachelor’s degree from St Andrews University, with an MSc and PhD from Aston University.  Her academic posts at Leicester University and University College London were followed by several years in industry before joining De Montfort University in 1993.  She founded and runs the internationally renowned Earth and Planetary Remote Sensing (EAPRS) Lab which achieved an extremely high grading in the recent Research Assessment Exercise.  She is currently a Cal/Val Principal Investigator for two European Space Agency missions, and is Director of the International Association of Geodesy IDEMS Centre.