Evan Greenberg
Tell us about yourself:
I am a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I work with Vamsi Ganti in the Surface Processes group. I came to UCSB by way of a Master’s degree working with Liz Hajek at Penn State and a short stint as a software engineer. I’m a fluvial geomorphologist and I combine remote sensing and field stratigraphy to study river processes in modern and ancient rivers. I also have a small cat named Neptune.
What is your research about?
I’m interested in human impacts on physical river processes. My PhD research focuses on probing the remote sensing record at global-scales to observe how river mobility changes under varying environmental conditions. Over 35 years of Landsat imagery provides a significant long-term record of shifting alluvial river shapes and sizes. I develop and apply methods to quantify the rates of river movement from Landsat imagery to understand how human impacts like river damming and climate change, which alter the amount of water and sediment rivers carry, ultimately influence river morphology and erosion. I’m also interested in developing measurements to better unlock fluvial stratigraphy as a source to quantify the shapes, forms, and dynamics of ancient rivers. I use the analysis of high-resolution topography from modern rivers to build predictive models that allow us to reconstruct river sizes and forms from channel-bar stratigraphy.
What excites you about your research?
Remote sensing is an extremely broad moniker that encapsulates methodologies that generate an unbelievable volume of observational data on the natural world. Using remote sensing to observe river processes is particularly exciting because we nearly have a four-decade long record of continuous river observation. This length of time allows us to resolve geomorphic processes over decadal timescales—something very difficult to achieve through field studies alone. We have growing sources of spatially and spectrally high-resolution sensors, which thankfully allows us to resolve smaller and smaller rivers with finer and finer detail.
What broader importance does your research have for society?
Humans directly and indirectly perturb natural river processes. My work attempts to build long-timescale connections between the amounts of water and sediment alluvial rivers carry and potential changes in river form, erosion rate, and process. I use empirical studies to document the sensitivity of these connections in modern rivers, which may help understand the civil risk and floodplain carbon preservation in future rivers.
What inspired you to pursue a career in Earth Science?
The short answer is that I was immediately convinced after spending my first week in the field in Northern Arizona as a Junior in college. Since then, I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had awesome mentors in undergrad and grad school that helped guide me to stratigraphy, geomorphology, and remote sensing.
What are you looking to do after you complete your PhD or postdoc?
I’m finishing up this year and I’m currently looking for postdocs and jobs in remote sensing. I’m looking to build geospatial data science skills across sensors (SAR/Optical), and hopefully apply them to broad-impact environmental science.
Given unlimited funding and access to resources, what is your dream project that you would pursue?
From the perspective of a process geomorphologist doing remote sensing, the two missing variables in most global-scale remotely-derived data compilations for river systems are water depth and grain size. While there is significant research on ways to get at water depth from remote sensing data, methods to estimate river sediment grain-size are considerably sparser. Growing hyperspectral data sources could provide an avenue to approach the question. I can imagine the overwhelming complexity of the problem, but it would be interesting to explore. Measuring grain sizes remotely would make it possible to make explicit connections between laboratory theory in sediment transport and observations of rivers at natural scales.
What else do you do? Any hobbies or interests outside of work?
I love to spend time outside hiking and camping. When I’m stuck inside, I enjoy reading science fiction, cooking and hanging out with my cat.
If you would like, please provide a link to your personal website.
https://greenberg.rocks/