SCIENCE  HIGHLIGHTS  -  SEPT / OCT  2004

Geodynamics Personnel Sought for Review, Committee Positions - 1
Sauber Serves on InSAR Working Group, Asked to Serve on UNAVCO Facilities Committee

Geodynamics personnel have always been active in professional community service, in positions ranging from journal editorships to session convenors and chairmen for major scientific meetings. Recently two members of the Branch were asked to serve on committees evaluating the long range planning of two very different programs.

For the last 4 months Jeanne Sauber has been the
the NASA/GSFC representative on the organizing
committee for the InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic
Aperature Radar) Working Group (IWG). The IWG
is a community-led effort dedicated to advancing
radar remote sensing. Interferometric SAR was
called out by the Solid Earth Science Working
Group report “Living on a Restless Planet” as one
of its highest priority future missions. Sponsored
by NASA, NSF and USGS, this IWG convened a
community-wide workshop in Oxnard, CA on 20-22 October 2004, which brought together more than 300 scientists and engineers from a variety of disciplines, all of which could benefit from an InSAR flight mission. In addition to discussions on SAR hardware and data processing developments, there were panel discussions on SAR data policies and possible future missions. Sauber gave a paper on “Creating a community working group for InSAR advocacy” and is a likely candidate to serve on the Steering Committee for the IWG as it coordinates efforts to advocate a future InSAR mission.

Even more recently Sauber was
invited to serve on the Facilities
Committee of UNAVCO. Funded
by NSF and NASA, UNAVCO,
Inc. is a non-profit membership-
governed organization that supports and promotes Earth science by advancing high-precision geodetic techniques such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). It provides community-based planning and management of activities, including working groups, meetings and workshops, and provides field, equipment and data support to Principal Investigators. UNAVCO, Inc. is also part of the team constructing EarthScope, a major new NSF and NASA supported solid earth science initiative. It maintains a facility in Boulder, CO to support university and other research investigators in their use of Global Positioning System (GPS) technology for Earth sciences research by providing state-of-the-art GPS equipment and field engineering support for projects, by installing, operating and maintaining continuous GPS networks globally, by undertaking new technology development and evaluating commercially available products for research applications, and by archiving GPS data and data products for future applications.
          Sauber’s role on the Facilities Committee would be to determine if UNAVCO has in the short term the necessary people, equipment, software and the like to meet its requirements.  On the longer term Sauber and co-members will be asked how UNAVCO can better serve as the major NSF facility for promoting geodetic science, including whether it should play a role in future InSAR efforts (see left).

Contact:  Jeanne Sauber, GSFC, Code 921, jeanne@steller.gsfc.nasa.gov