Members

Exploring the structure and function of microbial communities

Ben Livneh
Assistant Professor

The primary research interests of my research group is in quantifying the hydrologic impacts of both climate change and land cover disturbance processes across multiple scales. The scientific community’s understanding of climate change continues to evolve, and so we need a flexible framework—models, observations, and communication—to evolve together with this understanding. The tools we use in my research group to address these challenges involve integrating observations with modeling and statistics, to attribute causes and improve process understanding.

Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering
Ph.D., University of Washington, 2012
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Carli Brucker

Carli is pursuing a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Carli’s current research addresses the broad challenge of quantifying the impacts of wildfires on hydrologic responses in watersheds in the west. She is assisting in the design and creation of a laboratory wildfire and rainfall simulator, leading a field campaign and modeling effort to resolve the importance of terrain slope, rainfall intensity, and burn severity on runoff and sediment loading. The outputs from the laboratory effort will be used to constrain watershed-scale simulations across the west. Carli completed her BS in mechanical engineering in 2018 from the University of Iowa.

Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering

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Nels Bjarke

Nels Bjarke completed his B.S. in Earth and Planetary Science in 2014 and M.S. of Earth and Planetary Science in 2019. Nels's previous research focused on climate variability and the impact of warming regional temperatures in the southwestern US on the relationship between snow-pack and subsequent runoff season streamflow. Currently, Nels is pursuing his Ph.D. in the Civil Engineering department at CU Boulder. Nels' current research focuses on evaluating the historical and future water-energy balance across the western US using historical meteorological datasets, hydrologic models, and projected global climate model simulations from CMIP6 to constrain uncertainty in the future of surface water availability.

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Fangfang Yao
Post-doctoral Fellow

Fangfang is a postdoctoral fellow in Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). He holds a Ph.D. in Physical Geography from Kansas State University and an M.S. in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) from the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research explores the interaction among lakes, climate change and human activities with a primary focus on the terrestrial water cycle, climate and human impacts on natural and manmade lakes, and the environmental impact of dams. Currently, he is combining three decades of high-resolution satellite observations, climate, and hydrologic models, to quantify and attribute lake water storage trends across the globe.

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
Ph.D. in Geography
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Parthkumar Modi

Parth Modi completed his M.S. in Biological Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2020 and is currently a Doctoral Research Assistant in the Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering department at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has several experiences in land surface modeling (VIC, Noah-MP, National Water Model) and has worked on projects understanding the impacts of climate change on mesoscale hydrological processes and risk assessment of natural hazards including droughts and floods. Currently, his research projects are focused on identifying alternatives to snow-based streamflow predictions particularly during the drought, and understanding how coupled natural and human systems affect regional water economies/trade.

Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering

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Justin Pflug
Post-doctoral Fellow

Justin is a visiting postdoctoral fellow at CIRES, working with Dr. Ben Livneh and Dr. Jennifer Balch. Justin received his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington in 2021, where his research focused on snow model development and meteorological downscaling strategies for snow simulations in mountainous terrain. Justin is continuing this work with the Water and Climate Research Group, specifically investigating how information from remotely-sensed snowpack in historic periods can be used to improve future projections of mountain snow. Justin is using these projections in support of future climate assessments, water supply forecasting, and assessments of wildlife habitat for snow-adapted species like Wolverines.

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
Ph.D.
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Kaitlyn Bishay

Kaitlyn is pursuing her PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder with a focus in Hydrology, Water Resources, and Environmental Fluid Mechanics. In 2021, she graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Environmental Engineering from The University of Alabama. Her previous experience spans many disciplines, including civil engineering site design, natural hazards research, and the application of engineering principles to public policy development. Her current interest lies in the relationship between data-driven hydrologic models, the growing instability and uncertainty of the water cycle, and the timely and effective application of watershed management strategies.

Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering

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Aaron Heldmyer

Aaron received his B.S. in Environmental Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in 2014 and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Colorado Boulder. During his undergraduate career, he was a member of the McBride Honors Program, studied abroad in Newcastle, Australia, and received an Honors Enrichment Scholarship to intern at TechIDEAS, a software development company in Barcelona, Spain during the summer of 2014. Additionally, he participated in research investigating the effects of tailored, reclaimed water on the irrigation of turfgrass as an undergraduate research assistant. In the summer of 2017 he participated in the National Water Center Summer Institute in Tuscaloosa, AL to develop a statistically-based analytical tool for the National Water Model.

CIVIL ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL ENGINEERING

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Jenna Stewart

Jenna received her M.S. degree in Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering in June of 2017--congratulations Jenna! Her M.S. thesis is titled "Multi-algorithm modeling of suspended sediment in steep mountain catchments". Her research focused on developing a physically based hydrologic model to simulate the effects of climate change and land-cover disturbance on water quality and flow rates. Jenna received her B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Oregon in 2013. During her undergraduate career, she was a member of the Environmental Leadership Program Stream Stewardship team and completed an honors thesis on the effects of climate change on soil nitrogen storage in Pacific Northwest grasslands.

CIVIL ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL ENGINEERING

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Leah Bensching

Leah finished her MS in Civil Engineering under Prof. Ben Livneh and Prof. Joe Kasprzyk in December of 2018. Her research includes the application of a hydrologic sediment ensemble model to reservoir sedimentation. Prior to attending University of Colorado, she received her BS in civil engineering at Santa Clara University where she was involved in ASCE and helped develop the engineering peer advising program. She now works as an Assistant Water Resources Engineer at Hazen and Sawyer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

CIVIL ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL ENGINEERING

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Andrew Badger

Andrew is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Livneh Lab Group. His current research interests and projects range from modeling flood conditions in the Upper Missouri River Basin, analyzing snow-based streamflow prediction methods and coupling satellite observations with modeled products to estimate evaporation from the soil. Additionally, Andrew is interested in advancing the understanding of the relationship between the land-surface and climate system, modeling of agricultural water-use and associate impacts, and investigating how land-surface changes impact the water cycle and exploring the societal impact these changes can have. In addition to his research, Andrew has also been a lecturer in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Department te

CIRES
University of Colorado, Boulder
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Elsa Culler

Elsa Culler is interested in the ways in which land and water management decisions interact with the changing climate. Currently her research projects include the impacts of wildfires on the likelihood of future landslides and modeling present and future sediment accumulation in dams. Prior to coming to CU Boulder, she worked on data management and security software and informal engineering education for middle- and high-school students. She earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in 2013.

Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering
B.S. Mechanical Engineering
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Ronnie Abolafia-Rosenzweig

Ronnie completed his BS in civil engineering from Texas A&M University and is now a Doctoral Research Assistant at the University of Colorado Boulder. His current research interests are: assimilating soil moisture to estimate irrigation, developing a continental soil evaporation data set, and creating a remotely sensed ensemble of the terrestrial water balance. Ronnie has worked on land surface modeling and data assimilation with NOAA's Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland in the Summer of 2018 and NASA's Land Information System team in the Summer of 2019.

CIVIL ENVIRONMENTAL AND ARCHITECTURAL ENGINEERING

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Michelle O'Donnell

Michelle O’Donnell is a Master’s candidate in Civil Engineering. She graduated from Northeastern University in 2016 with a BS in Environmental Science. While working towards her degree, she worked for the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration in the River Instream Flow Stewards program, USGS in the New England Water Science Center, and in the Coastal Systems Group at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. After graduating, Michelle worked as the Watershed Management Assistant at the Cambridge Water Department, where she monitored water quality and quantity to inform reservoir management decisions. She is a NSF GRFP recipient and her current research investigates how changes in snowpack in the West will impact warm season streamflow.

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Group Alumni