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Dalia: My name is Dalia Kirschbaum, I'm a researcher in the Hydrology Lab
at Goddard Space Flight Center and my focus is landslide modeling.
I'm also
the GPM applications scientist, meaning that I help to
communicate the science and the data that we get from the GPM mission
to the public and end users.
I grew up in Minnesota, we have flooding, we have drought,
there are no landslides, except in the northern areas of Minnesota and very
small ones at that. So looking at earthquakes
or hurricanes was such a crazy phenomena, and I loved the idea
that nature was just so powerful, and
that we could actually use data from above the Earth to figure out what
is happening on the surface and in the atmosphere.
So I was always very
interested in math, and so all through school I kind of thought I was going to be either a math
major or do something with math. And then freshman year of college actually I took a very
interesting class on different environmental issues and I found that I
was really fascinated with natural disasters, but what I realized was that
you can actually apply math and you can apply science to real-world topics
and you can use the information that you get or the
results from your models to really help people and try to mitigate
against these hazards. So I decided to go to
graduate school with a focus on applying remotely sensed or satellite
data to evaluate hazards, all different types of
natural disasters. And in my dissertation I focused in
landslides because I felt that it was a very underrepresented hazard in the grand scheme
of natural disaster research. I really am looking
in quite global scales and I'm trying to figure out how landslides are occurring
and modeling the activity, from everything from the local,
one hillslope scale to the regional level, like Central America
to then the global scale. Most of my studies
were done in the computer lab or looking at different
models, but I did take some very interesting field trips during graduate school
and even during undergrad, to look at different rock formations
to look at landslide scars, and what you realize
is how important it is to really understand the total
environment in order to really get a sense of what is causing these hazards.
I think the most important thing is to continue
learning and to continue pushing what you think is interesting
and find a way to get yourself there.
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Rain drops