Research Projects

Climate Change & Hydroclimatic Risk in High Mountain Asia

Changes in High Mountain Asia (HMA) water resources affect the livelihood of more than a billion of people and have an impact on the biodiversity of the unique ecosystems of the region. Projections of changes in hydroclimatic risk are necessary to inform long- term policy and investment decisions of policymakers, industry, and the general public.

The overarching goal of this project is to advance understanding on the changes of hydroclimatic risks in HMA, with particular focus on projected changes in precipitation extremes and droughts under future climate scenarios.

Project title: Mapping changes in hydroclimatic risks in High Mountain Asia

Funded by NASA

 

Mapping Flood Inundation from Satellites

The increasing availability of satellite based sensors has opened new horizons for monitoring flood inundation from space. Different sensors provide images at different bands, spatial resolution and observational frequency. Therefore, optimizing the use of the various data sources is challenging but also promising.

This project focuses on the development of innovative techniques for Flood Inundation Mapping (FIM) from optical (VIIRS) and SAR (Sentinel) sensors. Prototypes of different algorithms and their data will be validated against reference FIM to identify best performing algorithms and investigate limitations with respect to land surface characteristics and flood types.

Project title: Accelerate the exploitation of satellite observations to improve flooding and inundation monitoring and forecasts.

Funded by NOAA

 

Climate Extremes and Biodiversity

Anticipating which species are at risk due to climate change requires accurately mapping climate variables across scales and predicting their future change. Accumulating evidence on increases in the frequency and intensity of climate extremes and associated hazards such as droughts highlight the need to focus on creating robust procedures to forecast changes in extremes and their impact on biodiversity.

One of the main goals of this project is to develop data layers on future drought projections from CMIP6 models and couple that with species distribution models to evaluate future risk of different species.

Project title: Collaborative Research: Near term forecast of global plant distribution, community structure, and ecosystem function. 

Funded by NSF

 

Hurricane Impacts on Water Resources of Small Tropical Islands

The impact of Hurricane Dorian (September 2019) was catastrophic, especially in Grand Bahama, where the hurricane generated a storm surge that drove extensive flooding and saltwater contamination of the groundwater resources of the island. Groundwater, in the form of freshwater lenses (FWLs), is the sole source of drinking water on the island. 

The overarching goal of this study is to understand how the rate of recovery of FWLs that have been impacted by storm-induced salinization is connected to climatological characteristics and how future FWL recovery will be affected by elevated sea level and extended periods of drought induced by climate change.

Project title: RAPID: Groundwater resilience to hydrologic extremes and climate variability: The case of hurricane Dorian. 

Funded by NSF

 List of All Research Projects

Source of support: NSF; Award Period: 9/20238/2026; Total Award Amount: $58,362; Role: PI 


Source of support: NASA; Award Period: 1/202312/2025; Total Award Amount: $659,991 ; Role: PI 


Source of support: NSF; Award Period: 10/2022 – 9/2025; Total Award Amount: $300,000; Role: PI 


Source of support: NJ Transit; Award Period: 10/2022 – 9/2025; Total Award Amount: $924,323; Role: Co-PI 


Source of support: NOAA; Award Period: 9/2022 – 8/2025; Total Award Amount: $750,000; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI 


Source of support: FOIR; Award Period: 9/2022 – 8/2023; Total Award Amount: $63,351; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI


Source of support: AKAH; Award Period: 9/2022 – 8/2023; Total Award Amount: $50,000; Role: PI 


Source of support: FIT; Award Period: 1/2022 – 6/2022; Total Award Amount: $11,675; Role: Co-PI


Source of support: FOIR; Award Period: 8/2021 – 7/2022; Total Award Amount: $140,500; Role: Co-PI

 

     Source of support: USAID; Total Award Period: 5/2021 – 4/2023; Total Award Amount: $198,378; Role: U.S. Partner

 

Source of support: NASA; Total Award Period: 8/2020 – 7/2023; Total Award Amount: $710,375; Role: PI

 

Source of support: NOAA; Total Award Period: 7/2020 – 6/2022; Total Award Amount: $1,758,000; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI

 

Source of support: EVERSOURCE; Total Award Period: 6/2020 – 5/2023; Total Award Amount: $200,000; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI

 

Source of support: EVERSOURCE; Total Award Period: 5/2020 – 12/2021; Total Award Amount: $150,000; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI

 

Source of support: NSF; Total Award Period: 1/2020 – 12/2020; Total Award Amount: $49,104; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI

 

Source of support: NSF; Total Award Period: 9/2019 – 8/2022; Total Award Amount: $943,275; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI