Research

expand to see the list of Publications (Since 2016)

Conference Proceeding Papers

Undergraduate Student researchers

My research interests are related to water resources engineering. Specifically, I am a hydrologist! Who is a hydrologist?! It’s easy; a hydrologist is someone who studies the movement, distribution, and management of water! 

If you are interested or if you know someone interested in doing research in water resources engineering, you are encouraged to review the available positions and their required qualifications and talk to me about your interests. We can work together to write a grant for one of the University of St. Thomas undergraduate research opportunities.   

The Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program provides a variety of grants to undergraduate students at the University of St. Thomas. Several of these grants are designed to provide students with funding that will allow them to focus on a semester- or summer-long research project under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Other grants are designed to reimburse students for travel expenses related to carrying out or presenting faculty-mentored research. Students in any major at any stage in their studies are eligible to apply for the grants available through UROP.

If you're not sure which grant would be right for you, you can begin by reading "Which Grant Should I Choose?"

Featured Research projects

Analysis and Modeling of Frozen Ground and Soil Temperature

Long periods of snow-covered frozen ground affect the generation of surface runoff by altering the infiltration process. Physically based approaches to identify frozen ground are relatively data-intensive since they incorporate heat transfer procedures for computing the energy flux of the soil. In order to simplify the identification of frozen ground, the majority of the macro-scale hydrologic models utilize empirical frost indices to estimate the frozen ground condition. The main objectives of this study are to provide statistical analyses of the frozen ground condition and to evaluate the performance of a continuous frozen ground index (CFGI) methodology by using measured soil temperature data.


We defined a set of hypotheses to evaluate how cold climate processes influence the surface and subsurface flow paths and affect the linearity/non-linearity of the storage-discharge relationship in spring and summer. The results confirmed that the cold climate processes control the recession behavior of the RRB. It was found that the streamflow discharge is linearly related to the storage during spring, whereas during summer, the relationship was less linear. Statistical analyses revealed that the antecedent winter soil temperature and snowpack control the seasonal dynamics of hydrograph recession. Particularly, results indicated a more linear storage-discharge relationship for antecedent winters characterized by colder soil temperatures and larger snowpack. These findings high- light the importance of the cold climate hydrologic processes in cold climate basins such as the RRB.

Horizontal structure of Macro-HyProS: a LEGO-fashion RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) block layout, in which Red Block represents the developed area, Green Block represents the vegetated area, and Blue Block represents the wetted area.

Macro-HyProS: A new macro-scale hydrologic processes simulator for depression-dominated cold climate regions

Macro-HyProS is a grid-based hydrologic model of a unique structure to deal with hydrologic complexities in depression-dominated cold climate regions. The model runs on a daily time step and incorporates a LEGO-fashion horizontal layout to account for sub-grid land-use heterogeneity. On the vertical layout, each grid consists of different bands, each of which is responsible for simulating specific hydrologic processes. Macro-HyProS employs improved methodologies to account for snow accumulation and ablation, depressions, and frozen ground condition. 

A new daily macro-scale grid-based snow model was developed to simulate the dynamics of snow accumulation and ablation processes. Unlike other macro-scale models that rely upon a single daily average temperature, the developed model takes into account sub-daily temperature fluctuations by considering minimum and maximum temperatures and their occurrence timing. The model was applied to the Missouri River Basin for water years 2011 and 2012, which represent two contrasting wet and dry years, respectively. The results were compared with those from the SNODAS snowmelt data to ensure that the HTIM provided comparable snowmelt results. 

Monthly comparisons of the snowmelt coverages simulated by using the hybrid temperature index method (HTIM), the standard temperature index method (TIM), and the Snow Data Assimilation System (SNODAS) based on three classes of snowmelt (Class 1: low, Class 2: moderate, and Class 3: high) in December 2010 (a, b, c, and d), March 2012 (e, f, g, and h), and April 2011 (I, j, k, and l).