DeFord Lecture Series
DeFord Lecture Series Speaker Schedule
The DeFord (Technical Sessions) lecture series has been a requirement and a tradition for all graduate students since the late 1940s. Once the official venue for disseminating Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences graduate student research, the DeFord Lecture series is now the forum for lectures by distinguished visitors and members of our community. Faculty and researchers from the Jackson School have invited prestigious researchers from around the world to present a lecture in this series. This is made possible only through a series of endowments, such as those funding past Distinguished Lectures.
The list below shows all the scheduled talks this semester. If you would like to meet with any of the speakers, please contact them or their hosts directly.
DeFord Lecture Series Spring 2026 Speaker Schedule
All talks are Thursdays from 3:30-4:30 p.m. in the Boyd Auditorium (JGB 2.324). Lectures will be recorded, and most past lectures are posted on the Jackson School YouTube channel.
Jan. 22
University of Virginia
Progresses and Challenges in Hydrology
Abstract: In order to study land surface hydrology, we need to use a multitude of tools, namely, modeling, observations and their synergism. After multiple decades of hydrological modeling, we still have major challenges. However, we have novel observations and mathematical methods that are now available and can be harnessed to achieve progress. These include earth observations that are available at global scales and at high spatial resolutions and frequent temporal repeat. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) can be used (specifically Transfer Learning) to determine streamflow in un-gaged or poorly-gaged watersheds.
In this talk, I will focus on four major questions and provide examples for each of the questions. These examples will highlight both advances and limitations for each issue.
(i) Do earth observations compare well with in-situ counterparts?
(ii) How important is rainfall in hydrological modeling?
(iii) Can we get higher spatial resolution of earth observations?
(iv) How do we study un-gaged/poorly gaged watersheds?
Feb. 12
Mati Carbon
Enhanced Rock Weathering for Improved Smallholder Farmer Welfare: An At-Scale Case Study for Rice Agriculture in India
Feb. 19
Exxon
The Consequences of Low Sediment Accumulation Rates in Marine Environments
Feb. 26
Colorado School of Mines
Is Seismology Actually Useful for Climate and Hazards Monitoring?
Abstract: The past two decades have seen major advances in seismic sensors, with growing application to observe fine-scale changes in the near surface, often forced by climate change or geohazards. This includes technologies such as portable nodes, low-weight accelerometers, and fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensing. With these sensors, we’ve observed new signals, imaged small features in the subsurface, and gotten our first up-close look at more processes. Modern seismic sensors can be the subsurface counterpart to remote sensing observations, which sounds ideal, but most folks in the geohazards and climate communities aren’t racing to adopt seismology into their toolkit. In this talk, we’ll look at the practical challenges keeping seismology from being more useful, and several of our recent advances that are helping us overcome these issues. We’ll explore these challenges in the context of alpine glacier observations, seismic hazards mapping, and a multi-year permafrost monitoring study. This talk will touch on sensor deployment in the field, large-scale data management, making our data analyses faster, and the challenges of automated interpretation of results in these new contexts.