Cathleen E. Jones, Ph. D.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Airborne Radar Remote Sensing of California’s Levees and Aqueducts

Abstract

California’s water resource management relies on a complex interconnected system of dams, levees, and aqueducts that collect, channel, and convey water throughout the state.  Monitoring the thousands of miles of levees and aqueducts is a Herculean task and has largely been done through ground-level observations and instrumentation that are not well-suited to frequent or spatially extensive measurement. Radar remote sensing could provide a game-changing technology for determining levee and aqueduct health status rapidly and on a broad scale through the use of synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR), a method for measuring small-scale surface deformation using either airborne or spaceborne instruments.  However, most of California’s levees and aqueducts are earthen structures or located in agricultural areas where use of InSAR is made notoriously difficult from loss of interferometric coherence introduced by vegetation, physical disturbance of the ground, and soil moisture.  In this presentation, a project to apply and improve InSAR-based measurements of California’s levees and aqueducts using the NASA airborne science instrument, UAVSAR, is described. The types of levee/aqueduct hazards that can be determined from an aircraft flying at 41,000 feet altitude are discussed with particular focus given to identifying changes to the structures from drought, land management practices, and fault-related hazards.

Bio

Cathleen E. Jones is a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where her main research is focused on using radar remote sensing for studying natural disasters and monitoring critical infrastructure, primarily using high resolution L-band PolSAR and InSAR based on UAVSAR data. Her research includes development of methods for determining oil slick characteristics and identifying levee deformation, seepage, and general subsidence rates using SAR.  In addition she has done work detecting sinkhole precursors in InSAR-challenged areas.  She received a B.S. in physics from Texas A&M and a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology.