Recent research foci

• • reformulating and improving modeling and metering of drought;
  • developing datastreams and operationalizing tools for drought and famine early warning and monitoring communities;
  • examining the effects of climate change and variability on the hydrosphere, specifically moisture dynamics at the land surface-atmosphere interface resulting in and from drought;
  • developing and operationalizing services of continental- and global-scale, real-time forecasts and reanalyses of hydrologic variables;
  • partitioning dynamics of secular hydrologic trends and variability, particularly in evaporative drivers;
  • overturning the temperature-proxy paradigm in evapotranspiration in science and operations;
  • developing and operationalizing the Evaporative Demand Drought Index – a tool for early warning and monitoring of drought;
  • quantifying and describing the spatial distribution of large-scale, natural water supply;
  • developing flash drought metrics and establishing principles and definitions to guide the science of flash-drought detection and prediction;
  • exploiting the relationships between evaporative fluxes, drought, and wildfire risk to develop decision-support tools for the wildfire community.

Core research skills

• • spatial and time-series analyses;
  • hydrologic model creation, calibration, and assessment;
  • GIS and programming (UNIX/Linux scripting, FORTRAN, IDL, Python);
  • management of large datasets;
  • fieldwork, including flow gauging and tracing, water quality and soil sampling, surveying, and hydrometeorologic experimentation from design and field-data capture to troubleshooting;
  • outreach with stakeholders and scientists from other fields;
  • communicating with diverse audiences on various topics through peer-reviewed scientific literature, conference papers, and direct instruction.

• vice-chair: American Meteorological Society (AMS) Committee on Hydrology, 2020-2022;
• committee member: AMS Committee on Hydrology, 2017-2022;
• conference chair: 34th Conference on Hydrology at 2020 AMS Annual Meeting;
• conference co-chair: 32nd and 33rd Conferences on Hydrology at 2018-2019 AMS Annual Meetings;
• conference co-chair: Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) 2023 Science Meeting;
• session chair: climate information session and food-security presidential session, 2022 AMS Annual Meeting; food-security session at 2023 and 2024 AMS; flash-drought session, 2021 and 2023 European Geosciences Union General Assembly (EGU), 2022-2025 AMS, and 2022 AGU Frontiers in Hydrology Meeting; hydrology and human health session, 2020 AMS; flood session, 2019 AMS; drought sessions, 2016-2018 and 2021-2022 AMS; evapotranspiration- and drought-related sessions, 2014-2016 American Geophysical Union Fall Meetings (AGU); evapotranspiration sessions, 2012-2019 and 2021 AMS;
• member: NOAA-Physical Sciences Laboratory (NOAA-PSL) Science Board, 2021-present;
• editorial board member: MDPI Hydrology, 2020-2021;
• guest editor: special collection “Land Use and Water-Carbon: How agricultural land use and management influence water-carbon interactions in dryland ecosystems” in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment;
• advisory board member and facilitator: NIDIS Flash Drought Virtual Workshop at NOAA-PSL, 2020;
• convener: year-long, weekly seminar series for in-house, national, and international speakers at Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University;
• proposal-review panel member: NASA Modeling, Applications, and Predictions program;
• proposal-review panel member: NOAA Climate Program Office NIDIS-Coping with Drought program;
• promotion and tenure committee member: School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska-Lincoln;
• Outstanding Performance Awards committee member: Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado;
• faculty awards committee member: Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada-Reno;
• peer reviewer: Advances in Science and Research; Agricultural and Forest Meteorology; Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society; Climate; Climatic Change; Earth Interactions; Environmental Research Letters; Geophysical Research Letters; Hydrologic and Earth System Sciences (HESS); Hydrological Processes; Hydrological Sciences Journal; Hydrology; Hydrology Research; International Journal of Climatology; IPCC Fourth Assessment Report; IPCC Sixth Assessment Report; Irrigation and Drainage; Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology; Journal of Climate; Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres; Journal of Great Lakes Research; Journal of Hydrologic Engineering; Journal of Hydrology; Journal of Hydrometeorology; Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering; Journal of Water Management Modeling; Nature Communications; Nature Geosciences; PLOS ONE; Science; Science of the Total Environment; Theoretical and Applied Climatology; Water; Water Resources Management; Water Resources Research.

• graduate teaching assistant: Colorado State University-Department of Civil and  Environmental  Engineering, Engineering Mechanics-Statics, a 200-level three-credit course in core engineering curriculum;
• instructor: Evaporative Demand, in COMET MetEd Advanced Hydrologic Sciences Virtual Course.
• doctoral committee member: Dr. Daniel McEvoy, University of Nevada-Reno;
• graduate student committee member: Shuang Xia, University of Nevada-Reno;
• graduate student committee member: Connor Seacrest, Colorado State University;
• mentor for: CIRES post-doctoral fellow, Matilda Newton, University of Colorado; Summer scholar, Timen Jansma, Wageningen University and Research; SOARS scholar, Delian Colon Burgos, Penn State University; and NERTO scholar, Siena Dante, City University of New York.

Doctor of Philosophy

2004
Hydrologic Science and Engineering, Colorado State University

Dissertation: Regional evapotranspiration and pan evaporation: Complementary interactions and long-term trends across the conterminous United States.

Master of Science

2000
Hydrologic Science and Engineering, Colorado State University

Thesis: Evaluating and enhancing two implementations of the complementary relationship in regional evapotranspiration.

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours)

1989
Civil Engineering, University of Leeds, UK

• Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) Outstanding Performance Award in Science for: ”Leadership and innovation in drought research, including development and operationalization of the Evaporative Demand Drought Index, its application to famine early warning, and strides in understanding flash drought,” 2022.
• American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Superior Paper Award: “The variability of ASCE Standardized Reference Evapotranspiration: a rigorous, CONUS-wide decomposition and attribution,” 2017.
• National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) grant ($36K): “Development of a Nevada Drought Early Warning System and NIDIS Application Tools,” 2016-2018.
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office (CPO) Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP) grant ($38K): “Developing a wildfire component for the NIDIS California Drought Early Warning System,” 2016-2018.
• NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (JTTI) grant ($891K): “Operationalizing an Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) service for drought monitoring and early warning,” 2016-2019.
• Gary Comer Abrupt Climate Change Fellowship, 2005-2008.
• National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Scholarship, 2002.
• W. Shen Water Resources Graduate Award, Colorado State University, 2001.
• American Geophysical Union (AGU) Hydrology Days Best M.S. Student Paper Award: “The complementary relationship in regional evapotranspiration: The CRAE Model and the Advection-aridity approach,” 1999.

• Vice-chair: American Meteorological Society Committee on Hydrology, 2020-2022.
• Editorial board member: MDPI Hydrology, 2020-2021.
• Member: American Meteorological Society Committee on Hydrology, 2017-2022.
• Faculty Affiliate: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 2015-2020.
• Member: American Geophysical Union.
• Member: American Meteorological Society.
• Member: European Geosciences Union.
• Member: International Association of Hydrological Sciences.