Hydrology

Dr. Karletta Chief is an Assistant Professor and Assistant Specialist in the Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. As an assistant professor, the goal of her research is to improve our understanding, tools, and predictions of watershed hydrology, unsaturated flow in arid environments, and how natural and human disturbances affect soil hydrology through the use of physically based methods. Dr. Chief research also focuses on how indigenous communities will be affected by climate change and collaborated in an interdisciplinary group of scientists including hydrologists, system dynamic modelers, and social scientists to determine how hydrological models can be improved to identify and mitigate risks to these vulnerable populations. As an extension specialist, she works to bring relevant science to Native American communities in a culturally sensitive manner by providing hydrology expertise, transferring knowledge, assessing information needs, and developing applied science projects.

I seek to understand the hydrometeorological and ecological aspects of the biosphere-atmosphere interaction in a wide variety of ecosystem across the Earth, and how land surface processes can be improved in land surface models schemes. I have particularly studied different aspects of the water, energy, and especially carbon dynamics in the Amazon basin, integrating in situ measurements from eddy covariance flux towers and land surface models with state-of-the-art model sensitivity analysis and parameter estimation techniques. In recent years, I have contributed to the understanding of the impacts of land-use/land-cover change in forest dynamics, such as small-scale deforestation in the Amazon rainforest using regional atmospheric models, and impact of selective-logging on land surface models parameter calibration. In addition, my colleagues and I have also contributed to a broader understanding of the climatic conditions of the Amazon basin during the Large-scale Biosphere-atmosphere experiment in Amazonia (LBA) relative to long-term climatology. I am also interested in understanding how tropical rainforest ecosystems may respond to changing climate in the next coming decades, and for that my colleagues and I have used the unique characteristics found inside the Biosphere2 Tropical Rainforest Biome to implement a land surface parameterization scheme, and to identify potential vegetation responses under a wide range of climatic conditions. My research colleagues and I implemented the first carbon-based land surface model into NASA Land Information System which will allow high-resolution, global spatial coverage assessment of the carbon dynamics and its feedbacks with land surface properties and potential impacts on energy and water balance. The ultimate objective of my research is to improve the linkage between hydrometeorology and ecology by integrating land surface models with optimization and data assimilation techniques.

Moe Momayez's research focuses on the development and application of non-invasive technologies to rock mechanics, rock physics, geomaterials characterization and environmental investigations. His research interests also include renewable energies, more specifically low-temperature geothermal heat extraction from underground mines and transformation of reclaimed mining lands and tailing ponds into photovoltaic solar farms.
 

I have been studying the plant ecology of our region since 1954, when I began teaching at the University of Arizona. I later joined the U. S. Geological Survey. I have coauthered several books. Among them, The Changing Mile (1965), The Changing Mile Revisited (2003), Bibliography of Repeat Photography for Evaluating Landscape Change (1984), The Ribbon of Green:Change in Riparian Vegetation in the Southwester United States (2007), Sonoran Desert Plants: An Ecological Atlas (1995), Repeat Photography:Methods and Applications in the Natural Sciences (2010),  Kenya's Changing Landscape (1998).

My interest lies in the dynamics of the region's vegetation with a drive for determining the causes for the changes.

Steve DeLong is a geoscientist that studies earth surface processes. His interests include how fault zones shape topography across spatial scales ranging from scarps to orogens, and temporal scales from minutes to millennia; rates, pattern, and timing of hillslope sediment production and sedimentary deposition in basins; how flash floods shape arid landscapes and, more generally, how climate and tectonics shape landscapes. He currently serves as lead scientist of the Biosphere 2 Landscape Evolution Observatory, a set of large-scale physical models used to investigate a wide range of interdisciplinary earth systems science topics.