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Natural hazard mitigation, the effects of global warming, and optimum use of water resources are major areas of concern for humankind today. The implications of space geodesy when applied to natural hazards associated with earthquakes and volcanoes are well known in the geoscience community, but space geodesy also has an impact beyond these traditional solid Earth hazards. Sea level rise, glacial melting, and hurricane forecasts are of immediate interest to communities around the world, particularly in the context of global climate change. Geodesy can also reveal the overlapping threats from multiple hazards—for example, in areas of coastal subsidence such as Bangkok, Thailand, the effect of continued sea level rise amplifies flooding hazard.
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Figure 1 - Map showing rate of subsidence for permanent scatterers in New Orleans and vicinity during 2002–05.Velocity values are given in millimetres per year as range change in the direction of radar illumination. Negative values indicate motion away from the satellite, consistent with subsidence. International airport, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport; MRGO, Mississippi River–Gulf Outlet canal. Insets show location (white frame) and magnified view (red frame) of the region west of Lake Borgne, including eastern St Bernard Parish. Note the high rates of subsidence on the levee bounding the MRGO canal. Large sections of the MRGO levee were breached when Hurricane Katrina struck on 29 August 2005 (see supplementary information). Scale bar, 10 km. Dixon et al, T. H. Dixon, F. Amelung, A, Ferretti, F. Novali, F. Rocca, R. Dokka, G. Sella, S.-W. Kim, S. Wdowinski, D. Whitman: New Orleans Subsidence: Space Geodesy and Hurricane Katrina Flooding. Nature 2006. More information is available here.
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