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
Title: Collaborative Research: IRES Track I: Post-hurricane recovery of island freshwater lenses: Understanding the impact of social and hydrological dynamics.
Source of support: NSF; Award Period: 9/2023 – 8/2026; Total Award Amount: $58,362; Role: PI
Title: Machine learning-based flash flood forecasting in West Africa with satellite observations.
Source of support: NASA; Award Period: 1/2023 – 12/2025; Total Award Amount: $659,991 ; Role: PI
Title: Collaborative Research: BoCP-Implementation: BioFI- Biodiversity Forecasting Initiative to Understand Population, Community and Ecosystem Function Under Global Change.
Source of support: NSF; Award Period: 10/2022 – 9/2025; Total Award Amount: $300,000; Role: PI
Title: Resilience Design Standards Document.
Source of support: NJ Transit; Award Period: 10/2022 – 9/2025; Total Award Amount: $924,323; Role: Co-PI
Title: Exploring the physical mechanisms of the role of soil moisture, topography, and diurnal cycle of insolation on S2S precipitation in Maritime Continent.
Source of support: NOAA; Award Period: 9/2022 – 8/2025; Total Award Amount: $750,000; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI
Title: Development and Validation of the Florida Public Flood Loss Model.
Source of support: FOIR; Award Period: 9/2022 – 8/2023; Total Award Amount: $63,351; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI
Title: Future climate risk for communities in selected districts in AKDN geographies across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan.
Source of support: AKAH; Award Period: 9/2022 – 8/2023; Total Award Amount: $50,000; Role: PI
Title: Satellite Imagery Downscaling via Deep Image Super-resolution (SIDDIS) - Real-World Data.
Source of support: FIT; Award Period: 1/2022 – 6/2022; Total Award Amount: $11,675; Role: Co-PI
Title: Development of Florida Public Hurricane Loss Model 2020-21 cycle.
Source of support: FOIR; Award Period: 8/2021 – 7/2022; Total Award Amount: $140,500; Role: Co-PI
Title: Agrivoltaic technology in drylands of West Africa: strengthening national innovation systems for diffusion and market development at the water-energy-food nexus.
Source of support: USAID; Total Award Period: 5/2021 – 4/2023; Total Award Amount: $198,378; Role: U.S. Partner
Title: Mapping Changes in Hydroclimatic risk in High Mountain Asia.
Source of support: NASA; Total Award Period: 8/2020 – 7/2023; Total Award Amount: $710,375; Role: PI
Title: Accelerate the Exploitation of Satellite Observations to Improve Flooding and Inundation Monitoring and Forecasts.
Source of support: NOAA; Total Award Period: 7/2020 – 6/2022; Total Award Amount: $1,758,000; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI
Title: High-resolution mapping of Renewable Energy Sources
Source of support: EVERSOURCE; Total Award Period: 6/2020 – 5/2023; Total Award Amount: $200,000; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI
Title: Pumped-hydroelectric energy storage from water supply reservoirs in Connecticut: potential, challenges and opportunities.
Source of support: EVERSOURCE; Total Award Period: 5/2020 – 12/2021; Total Award Amount: $150,000; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI
Title: RAPID: Groundwater resilience to hydrologic extremes and climate variability: The case of hurricane Dorian.
Source of support: NSF; Total Award Period: 1/2020 – 12/2020; Total Award Amount: $49,104; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI
Title: Collaborative Research: Near term forecast of global plant distribution, community structure, and ecosystem function.
Source of support: NSF; Total Award Period: 9/2019 – 8/2022; Total Award Amount: $943,275; Role: Co-PI/Institutional PI