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My name is Dalia Kirschbaum. I'm a researcher in the hydrology lab

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here at Goddard Space Flight Center, and my focus is landslide modeling.

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I grew up in Minnesota,

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we have flooding, we have drought. There are no landslides, except in the nortnern areas

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of Minnesota, and very small ones at that. So

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looking at earthquakes or hurricanes was such a crazy phenomenon.

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And I loved the idea that nature was just so powerful,

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and that we could actually use data

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from above the Earth to figure out what's happening on the surface and in the

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atmosphere.
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So I was always very interested in math, and so all through school I kind of thought that I was

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going to be either a math major or do something with math. And then freshman year of college,

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I took a very interesting class on different environmental issues.

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And I found that I was really fascinated with natural disasters

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but what I realized is that you can actually apply math and you can apply science to real-world

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topics, and you can use the information

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that you get or the results from your models to really help

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people and try to mitigate against these hazards.

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So I decided to go to graduate school with a focus in

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applying remotely-sensed--or satellite data--to evaluate hazards

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all different types of natural disasters. In my dissertation

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I focused in landslides because I felt that it was a very

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underrepresented hazard in the grand scheme of natural disaster research.

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I really am looking at quite global scales, and I'm trying to figure out

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how landslides are occurring and modeling the activity, from everything from

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the local, you know, one hillslope scale, to the regional level,

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like Central America, to then the global scale. Most

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of my studies were done in the computer lab or

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looking at different models, but I did take some very interesting field

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trips during graduate school and even during undergrad to look

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at different rock formations, to look at kind of landslide scars,

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and what you realize is how important it is to

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really understand the total environment, in order to really get a sense of

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what is causing these hazards. I think the most important thing is to

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continue learning and to continue pushing

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what you think is interesting and find a way to get yourself there.

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