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Global Rivers Group
@Virginia Tech
We use satellites, models, and fieldwork to study Earth's freshwater
We're an academic research group in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech. We are recruiting students and postdocs who are interested in using emerging technology to solve problems involving freshwater resources.
What we do
We study inland waters using satellite data, fieldwork, and computer models. We seek to understand how climate change and land use are altering the global water cycle, in particular river and lake hydrology. With rapid advancements in sensor technology, computing power, and model sophistication, it is an exciting time to be studying freshwater at the global scale.
Why we do it
Water is widely considered to be the world’s most vital natural resource, yet freshwater systems are being rapidly degraded by human activities. Our work is motivated by a desire to promote the conservation, management, and understanding of Earth's surface water resources.
News
Updated Apr 15, 2025
Apr 11, 2025—David, Hana and Yohtaro present at the Virginia Tech Office for GIS and Remote Sensing Research 2025 Symposium. Yohtaro won third place 🏆 for best presentation! Great job, all!
Apr 3-4, 2025—Hana, Yohtaro, Emily, David, Molly and Luisana present at the 2025 Department of Geosciences Graduate Student Research Symposium at Virginia Tech. Emily won a best talk award 🏆 and Molly won the best "upgoer5" award 🏆. Well done, everyone!
Mar 25, 2025—Katie publishes a paper in Earth and Space Science entitled, "Estimating wind direction and wind speed over lakes with SWOT and Sentinel-1 satellite observations". This is the first study to demonstrate that SWOT and Sentinel-2 SAR backscatter can be used to resolve wind fields at very high-resolution over lakes and resolution. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EA003971
- VT News article on the paper: https://news.vt.edu/articles/2025/02/science-radar-lake.html
Mar 22, 2025—Luisana wins a VT Geosciences Intro Level Teaching Award 🏆! Congratulations, Luisana and thank you for doing a great job educating our undergraduate students!
Mar 19, 2025—Paper published in Water Resources Research entitled "The Surface Water and Ocean Topography Mission (SWOT) Prior Lake Database (PLD): Lake Mask and Operational Auxiliaries" led by Jida Wang at University of Illinois. The paper presents the official prior lake dataset for the NASA/CNES SWOT satellite mission. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR036896
Feb 26, 2025—Yohtaro wins an AGU Outstanding Student Presentation Award 🏆 (OSPA)! This honor is awarded for only the most exceptional presentations during AGU 2024. Congratulations, Yohtaro!
Jan 22, 2025—Paper led by Ben Gorr at Texas A&M University published in Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets titled, "Decentralized Satellite Constellation Replanning for Event Observation". This paper describes a new decentralized method to capture events of interest on Earth's surface using satellite sensor webs. https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/epdf/10.2514/1.A36143
Jan 15, 2025—New paper published in Biogeosciences titled, "Ensemble estimates of global wetland methane emissions over 2000–2020", and was led by Zhen Zhang at the University of Maryland with George and Ryan Riggs contributing as coauthors. This study is one of the outcomes of the RECCAP2 Wetlands Working Group and is the first comprehensive evaluation and attribution of recent changes in methane emissions from wetlands. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-305-2025
Jan 1, 2025—Paper published in Journal of Hydrology titled, "Meteorological Drivers and the Trend of Daily Extreme Reservoir Evaporation Events in the Western United States", led by Bingjie Zhao, now at Brown University. Among other results, this study finds that extremely high evaporation events occur over lakes during times of high wind speeds. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.132589
Dec 20, 2024—Grant funded! NASA Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) proposal selected for funding entiteld "3D-CHESS FO: Autonomous Sensor Web for Inland Water Ecosystem Monitoring". Led by Dani Selva at Texas A&M University, George will serve as VT Co-I/Institutional PI with Quinn Thomas, Cayelan Carey, and Shaddi Hasan as VT Co-Is. https://esto.nasa.gov/project-selections-for-aist23/#Selva
Dec 17, 2024—George is quoted in a NASA-JPL News article on SWOT and the Ohio River Basin: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/cutting-edge-satellite-tracks-lake-water-levels-in-ohio-river-basin/
Dec 9-13, 2024—Katie, Emily, Molly, Yohtaro, Hana, Luisana and George all travel to Washington D.C. to present their research and network at the AGU Annual Conference. We also met up with former group mates Ryan Riggs, John Morgan, and Carter Boyd.
Nov 2, 2024—Review article published in Water Resources Research on "The Potential of Hydrogeodesy to Address Water-Related and Sustainability Challenges", led by Fernando Jaramillo at Stockholm University. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR037020
Oct 1, 2024—AGU abstracts accepted! The GRG will present five talks and two posters. See you in D.C.! https://agu.confex.com/agu/agu24/meetingapp.cgi/Person/28897
Sep 30, 2024—Emily and George travel to St Louis for the AWRA/UCOWR/NWIS combined meeting to present their research, network, and learn about applied hydrology. George also received the 2024 Early Career Award 🏆 for Applied Research from UCOWR.
Sep 19, 2024—New perspective paper published in Nature Water titled, "Biogeochemical and community ecology responses to the wetting of non-perennial streams". Led by Dr. Adam Price at the US Forest Service, this paper was organized by the NSF Dry Rivers Research Coordination Network.
Sep 13, 2024—The Global River Groups works together to clean up the New River at the ReNew the New trash cleanup event in Montgomery County, VA.
Aug 26, 2024—Katie travels to Taipei, Taiwan to participate in the APEC Industry-Academia Collaboration Workshop.
Aug 16, 2024—New paper published in Geophysical Research Letters entitled, Global Cloud Biases in Optical Satellite Remote of Rivers. Led by Dr. Ted Langhorst at UMass Amherst, this paper quantifies the effects of clouds on the ability to monitor rivers from space: https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110085
Jul 22, 2024—David Go joins the Global Rivers Group as a PhD student. He will be working on understanding the temporal dynamics of the river-atmosphere interface. Welcome aboard, David!
Jul 19, 2024—Yohtaro Kobayashi officially joins the Global Rivers Group as a PhD student. He will be working on modeling river light availability at the global scale. Welcome, Yohtaro!
Jul 17, 2024—The Global Rivers Group runs a day-long field trip and workshop to the New River near Blacksburg for 48 high school students as part of the VT College of Science Explore Physical Sciences Camp program.
Jun 25, 2024—Luisana and George run a workshop activity for 100 rising junior and senior high school students as part of the Black College Institute summer enrichment program.
Jun 16-21, 2024—Katie, Molly, Hana, and George travel to Chapel Hill, NC to attend and present at the NASA Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission Science Team Meeting. Go SWOT!