Delivering on the promise of SWOT’s hydrologic revolution
1 March - 1 June 2025
Biography
Dr. Colin J Gleason is the Armstrong Professional Development Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has been on the faculty since 2016. He received his PhD in Geography from UCLA, also in 2016. He is a global fluvial hydrologist that insists on primary data to reveal truth, both through fieldwork and satellite observations. He applies hydraulics and geomorphology to basic fluvial problems of water quantity and quality from primary data via modelling and data assimilation. Of particular interest is the inland water carbon cycle, global sediment dynamics, and global river discharge product generation and evaluation. His work regularly appears in Water Resources Research and Geophysical Research Letters, and media attention has centered around multiple recent publications in Science and AGU Advances. He is an NSF CAREER awardee, a NASA New Investigator, and winner of the 2024 AGU Early Career Award in Hydrology. He is also the lead academic scientist for Calibration and Validation of U.S. Inland Hydrology for the NASA SWOT satellite, and member of the Science Teams for NASA’s SWOT and High Mountain Asia programs. Dr. Gleason is also a keen cyclist and amateur boatbuilder, and has a weakness for both tasty food and cats.
Research Summary
Dr. Gleason will be hosted by Professor Paul Bates, and together they will parse and apply data from the recent NASA/CNES/UKSA/CSA SWOT [Surface Water and Ocean Topography] mission to hopefully deliver on its promise of a hydrology revolution. Dr. Gleason generates several mission products for NASA, and he will bring this production software an knowledge to the exchange to help Prof. Bates and others rapidly adapt to the constantly shifting data volumes and products that are inevitable in this early period of SWOT’s life. Hydrology is a fundamental science for both climate (as the expression of water and energy fluxes) and society (who need to know how much water is available for agricultural, municipal, industrial, and ecological use). SWOT is also a game-changing instrument for flood mapping, Dr. Bates’ speciality. Our plan is to produce some of the first statement-making papers from SWOT. While Drs. Bates and Gleason will collaborate extensively with their complementary global hydrology skills, Dr. Gleason will also offer a series of workshops and lectures for the broader Bristol community. These include;
Workshops:
SWOT 101- accessing and assessing SWOT data and its use in the sciences. Multi day hands on tutorial.
Academic publishing and professionalization- single day open forum discussing best practices
US Academic careers- single day Q and A about opportunities in the US Academic system
Lectures:
Everything everywhere all at once: satellites and the new global river hydrology
TBD; results from the visit
The details of Dr Gleason's workshops and lectures will be listed on our Events page in due course.
You can contact his host Professor Paul Bates for further information.
