Title: "Fluvial Remote Sensing: Progress, Problems, and Possibilities"

Abstract: Remote sensing has emerged as a powerful tool for characterizing river systems at high resolution and 
across a broad range of scales.  In this seminar, I will highlight some important developments in this rapidly 
growing field, with a particular emphasis on techniques for retrieving water depth from passive optical image data.  
Although the potential for remote sensing of rivers is clearly evident, significant limitations and challenges also 
must be acknowledged.  One such obstacle is the need for field measurements to calibrate image-derived depth 
estimates, but I will outline a new method that incorporates principles of open channel flow to infer bathymetry 
when field data from the time of image acquisition are not available.  Similarly, I will show how hyperspectral 
imaging and standard, near-infrared LiDAR data can be merged to obtain measurements of bed elevation, rather than 
just depth, and compare this approach to water-penetrating green LiDAR.  The seminar will conclude with some 
thoughts on future research directions for fluvial remote sensing, including the retrieval of additional river 
attributes, such as bottom composition and flow velocity, from hyperspectral images.