RESEARCH TOPICS

Our research focuses on understanding how humans and climate impact hydrologic processes, which in turn affects sustainable water resources. 

The Water-Food-Energy Nexus

These three critical systems are intertwined, thereby leading to unexpected vulnerabilities. Our research develops methodologies for studying the nexus and how the overall system responds to shocks.

The Built Environment and Climate Change

The built environment -- such as dams, land cover, and water extraction -- alter hydrologic processes locally, with some effects propagating downstream. We quantify what matters and at what scale.

Flooding: Processes and Quantifying Risk

Flooding causes significant loss of life and property damage every year. We focus on river flooding to understand the processes leading to floods and how to better characterize flood risk in a changing environment.

RESEARCH APPROACHES

We combine in situ observations, hydrologic models, and remote sensing datasets to understand the impact climate and humans -- including water use, infrastructure, and water management -- have on hydrologic processes. 

Physically-based models

We primarily use the VIC hydrologic model to simulate hydrologic processes on land and couple these with river models to simulate streamflow.

Data science approaches

We combine recently available datasets with approaches from data science to answer fundamental hydrologic research questions.

Stochastic models

Climate change and natural systems have uncertainty, and this research explicitly considers uncertainty in the system response to climate change.