AGU Distributed Sensing Technical Committee
LightNews LightNews
banner
agu-sensing.bsky.social
AGU Distributed Sensing Technical Committee
@agu-sensing.bsky.social
150 followers 55 following 160 posts
New @agu.org technical committee to advance the science and applications of distributed sensing across all areas of earth science. Let's connect!

⚒️🧪🌍🌊🌨️🌋🏔️🏞️🛰️👩🏾‍💻

https://connect.agu.org/hydrology/about/tc-committees/sensing
Posts Replies Media Videos
agu-sensing.bsky.social
What is our distributed sensing community working on? Read our recent profile of Ahmad Tourei, and learn about his work on enhancing large-scale Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) data management with unsupervised anomaly detection. ⚒️🧪

View the full profile:
drive.google.com/file/d/1obsa...
November 18, 2025 at 10:01 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Our latest quarterly newsletter is out! Find out:
- What’s Happening at AGU25?
- Project Highlight: Taking the Pulse of the Watershed
- Weather Instrument Survey
- Researcher Profile: Ahmad Tourei
- Community Calendar

View the full newsletter: higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/AGU/31ea296c...
Screenshot of first page of newsletter: Welcome & Update from the Chairs Welcome to the third edition of the Distributed Sensing Technical Committee (DS TC) Newsletter! Prefer to listen? Try out the DS TC Newsletter Podcast! The countdown to AGU25 is on! We hope that you will be as excited as we are about all of the great activities that will be going on this year during the meeting. We are inspired by the 5 MacGyver Sessions spanning multiple AGU Sections and their plan to “take over” AGU with a DIY virtual session open to any poster presenter! Our Committee is also partnering with AGU Open Science to host an innovative new pilot program for “scientific expeditions” of the Exhibit Hall — this is a great chance for all of you intrepid science explorers to volunteer to lead your own tour. Don’t forget to attend our Committee’s Science Exchange Session, which will take the place of our regular Technical Committee meeting this year. We are particularly excited about priming our community discussions with a panel of luminaries, including Shelley Stall (AGU VP of Open Science), Shah Selbe (engineer, conservation technologist, and National Geographic Explorer who has founded Conserify and FieldKit), and John Selker (Professor at OSU, Past President of AGU Hydrology, and maker extraordinaire!), who just had his and Nick van de Giesen’s work on the Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) featured in EOS — check it out! And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg, so check out the additional sessions, Town Halls, and social events below (pro tip: Stephen likes fruity drinks!). Beyond AGU, make sure to check out the invitation to collaborate in Taking the Pulse of the Watershed in Rosemary Knight’s featured contribution. We are grateful to groups willing to make space for these community-focused opportunities for research in their projects! Let us know if you would like to share more test beds, platforms, or experiences that [exceeds alt text limit]
November 12, 2025 at 10:01 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
We* may be biased, but the East River watershed is an amazing living laboratory for interdisciplinary distributed sensing. Researchers have come together from all over to collect water samples, do distributed temperature sensing studies, fly thermal IR drone surveys, and much, much more.
Photo of USGS researchers flying a thermal infrared camera on a small quadcopter. They are standing on a grassy valley hillside. The meandering East River is visible to the right. The background is grassy and tree-covered mountains, with a larger more barren mountain in the distance.
October 8, 2025 at 8:30 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
📄 Recent study explored trade-offs in sampling density vs frequency for the spatial stability of surface water quality patterns over time, across over 250 monitoring sites sampled over two decades.

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
doi.org/10.1029/2024...

#hydrology #WaterQuality ⚒️ 🧪
Photo of Figure 3 from paper: Spatial stability of water quality: (a) at each sampling date in the entire watershed; and (b) versus the number of sampled sites for each sampling date across the 5 focal parameters. Solid horizontal lines in each panel indicate the threshold between high and low spatial stability of rss = 0.50
October 6, 2025 at 9:30 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Distributed Sensing Community Calendar Highlights!

⚒️Environmental Seismology
www.seismosoc.org/environmenta...
14–18 Oct 2025

⚒️SEG 2025 Summit on Drone Geophysics
seg.org/calendar_eve...
27–30 Oct 2025

⚒️ 2025 Global Summit on Environmental Remediation
www.pnnl.gov/projects/rem...
4-6 Nov 2025
Distributed Sensing Community Calendar Upcoming Highlights Environmental Seismology https://www.seismosoc.org/environmental-seismology/ Dates: 14–18 October 2025 UAVs and Drones in the Geosciences https://seg.org/calendar_events/uavs-and-drones-in-the-geosciences/ Paper Deadline: 15 October 2025 SEG 2025 Summit on Drone Geophysics https://seg.org/calendar_events/2025-summit-on-drone-geophysics/ Dates: 27–30 October 2025 2025 Global Summit on Environmental Remediation https://www.pnnl.gov/projects/remplex/2025-summit Dates: 4-6 November 2025 OPEnS Lab Sensors Workshop https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X0L_wyyJVoaXPO35GZo624tUKvpeYd1I/edit?tab=t.0 Date: 14 December 2025 AGU 2025 https://www.agu.org/annual-meeting/ Dates: 15–19 December 2025 CTEMPS AGU One-Day Fiber Optic Sensing Training https://ctemps.org/sites/ctemps.org/files/ctemps_agu25_flyer.pdf Dates: TBA, during AGU Fall Meeting
October 1, 2025 at 8:00 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
📄 New: proposed glacial lake monitoring network to mitigate threat of glacial lake outburst floods in the Himalaya through improved understanding and prediction, supporting early warning systems and strengthening disaster risk management.
doi.org/10.1175/BAMS...
bsky.app/profile/irfa... 🧪 ⚒️
Zhang et al, 2025, Fig. 3. Schematic of parameters to be monitored in a glacial lake monitoring network. The monitoring system is divided into moraine-dammed lakes and ice-dammed lakes. The top panel shows the monitoring targets (glacier, lake, dam, and downstream exposure and flooding) by instruments such as satellite, uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV), automatic weather station (AWS), uncrewed surface vessel (USV), water level logger, time-lapse camera, and helicopter. The lower panel shows the trigger, mechanism, and downstream impact of GLOFs for moraine-dammed lakes and ice-dammed lakes, respectively.
September 23, 2025 at 8:00 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
📄 New paper: Distributed Acoustic Sensing to Estimate the Permeability
Researchers conducted a lab experiement to use DAS to map borehole fracture networks and characterize flow and permeability.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/... doi.org/10.1029/2025...

⚒️ 🧪 #geophysics #hydrology
Schematic and laboratory photos of the experimental setup to measure pressure drop. (a) Experiment design showing the 80 cm tube filled with beads the with inlet and outlet pressure sensors and locations of the accelerometer and DAS fiber. (b) Photographs from the laboratory showing the experimental setup on a vibration isolation table with 1 m tubes attached to the flow apparatus. (c) Pressure measurements for different inlet flow rates showing the change through the system.
September 19, 2025 at 5:04 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Coming to AGU25 this fall: Hands-On Fiber-Optic Sensing!
This daylong workshop (date TBD) will be a fast-paced intro to Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) & Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) for Earth and environmental applications. Find out more:

ctemps.org/sites/ctemps...
Photos of adult learners working on equipment and sitting in a classroom. Text: CTEMPs Hands-On Fiber Optic Sensing (DAS & DTS). One-Day AGU Training Workshop -- in person.
September 16, 2025 at 10:01 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
For #FieldworkFriday, Evan King is measuring infiltration rates, collected using a MINI Disk Infiltrometer across soils derived from varying lithologies. Work took place in July 2025, in the outdoor watershed laboratory of the East River in Crested Butte, Colorado. ⛰️

📸: Evan King
Photo: Smiling person standing on valley hillside overlooking plush green valley with mountain the background. They are holding equipment in their hand. Scenic pink sky at sunset over the mountains in the background. Foreground is green grass with wildflowers and some trees, as well as a few wooden buildings visible that are part of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory field station. Photo of infiltrometer on bare dirt, with digging tools and small scrub trees visible in the background.
September 12, 2025 at 10:02 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
🗓️ Distributed Sensing Community Calendar Highlights

⚒️ Near-Surface Geoscience 2025
eagensg.org
7-11 September 2025

⚒️ AEG 2025
www.aegannualmeeting.org
23-27 September 2025

⚒️ Snow Measurement Field School 2026
www.cuahsi.org/workshops/sn...
Application Deadline: 25 September 2025
Distributed Sensing Community Calendar Upcoming Highlights Near-Surface Geoscience 2025: Expanding Horizons https://eagensg.org Dates: 7-11 September 2025 AEG 2025 https://www.aegannualmeeting.org Dates: 23-27 September 2025 Snow Measurement Field School 2026 https://www.cuahsi.org/workshops/snow-measurement-field-school-2026 Application Deadline: 25 September 2025 Advancing Critical Zone Science: 3rd OZCAR TERENO International Conference https://ozcartereno2025.sciencesconf.org/ Dates: 29 September - 2 October 2025 Environmental Seismologyhttps://www.seismosoc.org/environmental-seismology/Dates: 14-18 October 2025 OPEnS Lab Sensors Workshop https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X0L_wyyJVoaXPO35GZo624tUKvpeYd1I/edit?tab=t.0 Date: 14 December 2025 AGU 2025 https://www.agu.org/annual-meeting/ Dates: 15-19 December 2025
September 4, 2025 at 10:01 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Fieldwork throwback photos from a few years ago! Scientists from Bahir Dar University conducted multiple hydrogeophysics surveys, including short and normal long resistivity logging in Eastern Ethiopia and vertical electrical sounding in Northwestern Ethiopia.
📸: Bahir Dar University
⚒️ 🧪 #geophysics
Photo of three people under an umbrella in an arid environment. Two people are looking at equipment console. third person is managing a cable reel. Caption: This geophysical resistivity log (short and long normal) was conducted after drilling a 250-meter- deep water well to evaluate aquifer parameters and assist in designing the casing installation at the Harawe well field, located in the semi-arid region of Eastern Ethiopia. Photo of group of people managing cable reels and talking on a grassy field. Caption: Setting up field equipment in a village in Northwestern Ethiopia to conduct a Vertical Electrical Sounding (VES) survey for a potential water bottling company, together with colleagues.
September 2, 2025 at 11:00 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Just wanted to let you know, clicking on the link generates an error on our end? Tested in chrome, safari, and ff.
Screenshot of link error
August 29, 2025 at 8:40 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Scientists never stop learning 👩‍🎓! Earlier this month scientists came together at the University of Nevada, Reno, to learn more about distributed temperature & acoustic fiber-optic sensing, from basic principles to field deployment to data processing.

Learn more at ctemps.org

⚒️ 🧪
📸 Credit: CTEMPs
Photo: Scientists in a classroom during a presentation Photo: Scientists looking at field equipment while someone is talking Photo of equipment controller sitting on a table: HDAS, High Performance Distributed Acoustic Sensor
August 28, 2025 at 3:48 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
📄 Recent WRR paper on 3-year distributed temperature sensing study to quantify specific discharge and inter annual variations in groundwater flux along a braided river channel in New Zealand.

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

doi.org/10.1029/2024...
Figure 2: Aerial photos of river conditions over time. Graph of River flow at Whitecliffs from October 2020 to September 2023.
August 15, 2025 at 10:04 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Hey, we recognize the person in that cap and gown! Big congratulations & shoutout to @alekseinelaev.bsky.social for earning his masters degree. Aleksei is our Committee secretary, and we are grateful for his never-ending enthusiasm and energy for supporting and building our community. 🎓 🎉
Photo: Person in graduation cap and gown standing on stage in front of a slide with their name and thesis information. Two other people are also standing on stage with them.
August 10, 2025 at 5:02 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
📄 "Over, Under, and Through: Hydrologic Connectivity and the Future of Coastal Landscape " presents an approach to advance understanding of coastal seawater intrusion using distributed sensor networks, remote sensing, and more.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
doi.org/10.1029/2024...
Helton et al figure 1. Conceptual diagram. The landward movement of seawater occurs over land (storm surges and tides), under the ground (groundwater), and through surface waters (natural and built channels). Panels below the main figure illustrate the specific hydrologic connections between surface and groundwater salinization. (a) Storm surges can overtop coastal defenses (e.g., seawalls), leading to accumulation of seawater on land surface and its percolation into the groundwater. (b) SLR causes the landward movement of saline and brackish groundwater and a rise in the water table. (c) Reductions in freshwater flow due to drought, dams, and water extraction, and increasing connections due to dredging, channelization, and ditching cause SWI into surface waters and tidal floodplains, followed by downward movement of surface water into the groundwater. In Panels (a–c), red arrows show movement of saline waters and hatched areas indicate changes in water levels and/or flow.
August 8, 2025 at 7:01 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Get to know our community! Meet Dr. Haokai Zhao, a postdoc at MIT, where he focuses on environmental systems sensing and modeling, and urban sustainability.

He works on developing a sensor-to-ML framework for real-time soil moisture monitoring & algorithms for groundwater contamination assessment.
Distributed Sensing Researcher Profile: Haokai Zhao Dr. Haokai Zhao is a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, whose research focuses on Earth and environmental systems sensing and modeling and urban sustainability. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Columbia University and holds a B.Eng. degree in Electrical Engineering from Tongji University. Photo: Haokai Zhao installing a sensing unit in the field. During his PhD studies, Dr. Zhao led several interdisciplinary projects for addressing urban sustainability challenges, including developing a novel land surface temperature modeling approach for mitigating extreme urban heat, and creating a wireless environmental sensing network for urban green space monitoring and stormwater management. Photo: LoRaWAN-based environmental sensing system developed by Dr. Zhao. At MIT, he has been working on synthesizing Bayesian data assimilation and deep learning techniques to develop a sensor-to-ML framework for real-time soil moisture monitoring and forecasting. He also develops algorithms for anomaly detection and spatial interpolation for ground water contamination assessment, aiming for the establishment of effective long-term environmental sensing networks to advance climate resilience and sustainable development. Dr. Zhao’s work has been published in leading journals such as Sustainable Cities and Society and Scientific Reports. His work has been honored with several awards, including the Best Short Paper Award at IEEE IE 2022 and the Floyd Hasselriis Educational Support Award from ASME. Beyond his research, he enjoys soccer, photography and road trips. Want to suggest a profile? Reach out to the Student and Early Career Subcommittee via Evan King (e_king@mit.edu). Photo: scientist with a shovel digging below a tree
August 7, 2025 at 11:00 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Drone folks! Have you submitted your abstract for the 2025 SEG Summit on Drone Geophysics? Deadline is Sunday, August 10.

📣 From sensor innovations to transformative sUAS applications, showcase your work.

📬 Submit your abstract now: seg.org/calendar_eve...

#Geophysics #UAS #drones
Graphic: SEG NSG Summit on Drone Geophysics, 27-30 October 2025, Virtual. Submit your abstract.
August 7, 2025 at 1:01 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
🗓️ Distributed Sensing Community Calendar Highlights

⚒️ Save the Date! AGU Distributed Sensing Technical Committee Call
Date: 21 August 2025
Sign up for the email list to receive the link
connect.agu.org/hydrology/ab...
All AGU members interested in distributed sensing systems are welcome!
Image of calendar highlights. Refer to calendar link for full details.
August 5, 2025 at 11:00 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Do you work on instrumentation used in distributed sensor systems? These technologies are transforming the earth sciences by enabling high-resolution, real-time monitoring across scales and domains. You're invited to submit to this interdisciplinary #AGU25 session.

agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/pr...
Graphic advertising AGU25 session H145 - Understanding Distributed Sensing Instruments for Scientific Discovery: A Guided Tour through the Tools of Earth Science
July 13, 2025 at 9:00 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Are you working on integration of flux tower and remote sensing data for resource management & environmental monitoring? Submit to this #AGU25 session on advancing methods and applications that link eddy covariance fluxes with RS observations across scales. ⚒️

agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/pr...
AGU25: B086: Surface-Atmosphere Interactions: Scaling Fluxes with Remote Sensing As flux tower and remote sensing (RS) communities converge through shared goals in resource management and environmental monitoring, the need for scale-aware data integration has never been more urgent. This session builds on recent outcomes from the AmeriFlux–NEON–CarbonDew workshop series “Remote Sensing and Fluxes Upscaling for Real-world Impact” and will focus on advancing methods and applications that link eddy covariance fluxes with RS observations across spatial and temporal scales. Conveners: Stefan Metzger, Nicola Falco, Leila Hernandez Rodriguez, David Durden
July 13, 2025 at 7:00 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
Do you use distributed fiber-optic sensing for geohazard monitoring? Submit to this #AGU25 interdisciplinary session on how fiber sensing is advancing near-surface geosciences through scalable, high-resolution insights into Earth processes. ⚒️
agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/pr...
@jajofrank.bsky.social
July 12, 2025 at 9:00 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
How are you moving your field data where you want, when you want, and at the speeds you need? Present a poster at this #AGU25 interdisciplinary distributed sensing session on wireless field solutions! Let’s share solutions and collaborate:
agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/pr...
@cbdawson.bsky.social ⚒️🧪
July 12, 2025 at 7:00 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
📰 Hot off the press! Check out the latest Distributed Sensing Technical Committee (DS TC) newsletter for ...

🔧 A list of AGU25 MacGyver Sessions
👩🏾‍💻 Additional great AGU25 sessions you can submit to
⚒️ A community member profile
📸 Field photos, and more!

drive.google.com/file/d/1MtXr...
Screenshot of first page of newsletter: AGU Distributed Sensing Technical Committee Welcome & Update from the Chairs Welcome to the second edition of the Distributed Sensing Technical Committee (DS TC) Newsletter! Our community brings together members from various backgrounds and disciplines working on different aspects related to sensing across all domains supported by AGU. We are happy to share with you some exciting recent developments. Last month we held a meeting with AGU leadership to discuss the mission of the Technical Committee and the needs of our community to develop the best framework within the AGU structure to fit our cross-sectional representation, activities and collaborations. The leadership was intrigued by the interdisciplinary nature of our group and there are ongoing discussions on the topic. We will keep you posted! In addition, preparations for AGU25 are underway. We would like to thank all the members who have submitted sessions and workshops proposals, and the AGU Session Development Subcommittee for leading and coordinating the efforts. We are looking forward to receiving your abstracts, showcasing your exciting works and findings! Let’s measure together! Stephen Moysey (Chair) & Emily Elhacham (Co-Chair) AGU Distributed Sensing Technical Committee (DS TC) Save the date! AGU Distributed Sensing Technical Committee Call Date: 21 August 2025 Time: 3:00-4:00 PM U.S. Eastern Time (7:00PM GMT) Meeting link will be sent to the DS TC mailing list.
July 11, 2025 at 2:02 PM
agu-sensing.bsky.social
🗓️ Distributed Sensing (DS) Community Calendar Highlights 🧪

⚒️ AWRA 2025 Annual Water Resources Conference
www.awra.org/Members/Even...
Abstract Deadline: 25 July 2025

⚒️ AGU 2025 (Deadline)
agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/pr...
Abstract Deadline: 30 July 2025
Distributed Sensing Community Calendar Upcoming Highlights AWRA 2025 Annual Water Resources Conference https://www.awra.org/Members/Events_and_Education/Events/2025%20Landing%20Pages/01_Annual/Annual2025.aspx Abstract Deadline: 25 July 2025 AGU 2025 (Deadline) https://agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/prelim.cgi/Home/0 Abstract Deadline: 30 July 2025 OCEANS 2025 Great Lakes (Deadline) https://greatlakes25.oceansconference.org/ Paper Deadline: 31 July 2025 SEG 2025 Summit on Drone Geophysics (Deadline) https://seg.org/calendar_events/2025-summit-on-drone-geophysics/ Abstract Deadline: 10 August 2025 CTEMPs Hands-on Workshop in Fiber-Optic Distributed Acoustic and Temperature Sensing for Environmental Monitoring https://ctemps.org/sites/ctemps.org/files/ctemps_summer_workshop_2025_final_edit.pdf Dates: 11-15 August 2025 AGU Distributed Sensing Technical Committee Call https://connect.agu.org/hydrology/about/tc-committees/sensing Date: 21 August 2025
July 1, 2025 at 7:01 PM