News

Anny Cazenave is appointed to the annual chair "Sustainable Developments, Environment, Energy and Society" at the Collège de France. Its inaugural lecture "Studying the Earth and the environment from Space" done on March 2013 is presented.

Anny Cazenave, has just appointed to the annual chair "Sustainable Developments, Environment, Energy and Society" at the Collège de France. Its inaugural lecture done on 21 March 2013, described the current state of knowledge in this discipline and also presents its research program.

Another lectures, seminars, or symposium will be held at the Collège de France. See the <link http: www.college-de-france.fr site en-anny-cazenave _blank external-link-new-window>program on this website.

See this <link http: www.college-de-france.fr site en-anny-cazenave _blank external-link-new-window>video (in french, 1:11) on the Collège de France website and discover the following topics:

• The Earth, a complex dynamic system
• Shapes of the Earth over the centuries

• The gravity:
  • The satellite orbit deformed under the Earth gravity field effect
  • Techniques to measure the satellite orbits (Doris)
  • Successive generations of gravity models
  • GOCE, a revolution for the measurement of the gravity field
  • The hills and valleys of the geoid, an image of the interior of the Earth
    
    
• The altimetry:
  • The altimetry, its principle
  • The sea surface: a variable component over time (ocean dynamic, tides), a permanent component (geoid)
  • The beginnings of the high-precision altimetry, 1992
  • The bathymetry derived from satellite altimetry
  • The Earth deformations (tides, flattening, horizontal and vertical movements)
  • The tectonic plates, ground stations for the geodetic network
  • The ocean seen from space
  • The altimetry with high-precision : knowledge of ocean circulation, the role of the ocean in the climate system
    
    
• The ocean and climate
  • El Niño seen by the satellite Jason-2
  • The mean sea level rise
  • Sea level: comparison between observation vs estimation of climate models
  • Contribution of ice in the sea level rise
  • Contribution of the steric effect in the sea level rise
  • The rise in the level of the oceans is far from uniform
    
    
• Fresh water on Earth:
  • Example of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates
  • Surface waters observed by altimetry: examples from Lake Balkhash, Lake Mead, the Congo Basin
  • SWOT, a mission to revolutionize the management of surface waters (2020)
  • Soil moisture measured by SMOS satellite
  • Groundwaters measured by GRACE satellite
  • Spatio-temporal evolution of the total stock of water in river basins
  • Variations of the total water storage measured by GRACE in the the Ganges and the Indus bassins
    
    
• The observation of land surfaces by remote sensing:
  • Maps of land use by by remote sensing in Europe
  • Forest monitoring (Vegetation instrument on SPOT)
  • Example of deforestation in Brazil (Modis instrument on TERRA)
  • Impact of the deforestation on the carbon cycle
  • Emission of CO2 in the atmosphere due to human activities
  • Carbon sink / Vegetation sink
  • Introducing the future EU mission BIOMASS, to define the role of vegetation in the carbon cycle
  • Precise agriculture using space techniques (water stress, fertilizer rates)
  • Natural disasters, number of natural disasters in the basis of the EM-DAT (International Disaster Database)
  • Creation of the International Charter "Space and Major Disasters"
  • World Map of activations of the Charter for recent disasters (cyclone Sandy in Haiti, October 2012)