Nicoleta Cristea
University of Washington, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
In the western United States, mountain snowpack and forests together control how much water reaches streams and when it arrives. As temperatures rise and snowpack shrinks, summer streamflows are dropping, harming salmon and straining water supplies.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
hydrology
snow water equivalent
snowpack
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Measure sap flux, soil moisture and snow across forest stands of different ages in western Washington to test how forest regrowth after clear-cut harvest affects summer low streamflows.
- Test and implement two hydrological models, co-designed with Tribal representatives and resource managers, linking upper-watershed forest management to streamflow in salmon spawning and rearing habitat.
- Develop physics-informed graph neural networks that combine snow accumulation and melt equations with AI to forecast snow water equivalent across western U.S. terrain.
- Make snow water equivalent forecasting tools accessible through the GeoWeaver workflow management platform and hackathon-style training workshops for students and snow researchers.
More about the research
Both projects aim to better understand and predict this water. One asks how forest management affects summer low flows. The other works to forecast how much water the snowpack holds.
Why it matters
Tribes, forest managers and water agencies in the Pacific Northwest could gain evidence on whether forest practices like thinning help sustain summer streamflows for threatened and endangered salmon. More accurate snow water forecasts could also help water managers across the western U.S. plan supplies as snowpack declines with warming.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Collaborative Research: CAIG: Physics Informed Graph Neural Network-based Snow Water Equivalent Forecasting
NSF · Oct 2024 – Sep 2027
CIVIC-PG Track A Building a coalition of scientists, Tribal representatives, and resource managers to test forest management effects on summer low flows in the Pacific Northwest
NSF · Oct 2024 – Sep 2026
Closest labs
Catalina Segura
Oregon State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Determine how burning of vegetation alone versus vegetation and soil changes snow accumulation, snowmelt, streamflow and underground water storage in burned Willamette National Forest watersheds, using snow surveys, geophysics and soil infiltration tests.
Daniella Rempe
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Test whether slow refilling of deep subsurface moisture, rather than lasting tree physiological damage, explains why forest growth and streamflow stay suppressed after drought ends, using a multiyear deep-moisture record spanning before, during, and after a drought.
Xin Li
Texas A&M University-College Station, TX·Engineering
Develop physics-informed neural networks, AI models constrained by wave mechanics, that estimate nearshore bathymetry, waves and currents simultaneously from optical and lidar images of the surf zone.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
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