In the Soil: Where Nature Stores and Accesses Water

I am a PhD candidate in Hydrology at the Joint Program at UC Santa Barbara & San Diego State University. My work is currently supported by the QUAD Fellowship and the Shida Scholarship Program.

Soil moisture links land and air, driving water, energy, and carbon cycles. Yet, our understandings of these processes across space and time remain incomplete. To address this challenge, I study how soil, water, and the environment interact at catchment and landscape scales. I combine multiple data sources and approaches, from field sensor, satellite remote-sensing, numerical models, to computational methods, to illuminate these patterns. My work seeks to develop representations that reconcile the observation with current theory, improve Earth and water system model predictions, and strengthen our capability to forecast flood, drought, and wildfires under changing climate and land-use.

Outside of my office, I love hiking, camping, and backpacking, and exploring beautiful landscapes. I am also a big fan of brewing third-wave coffee. When I’m not outdoors, I enjoy reading books on a wide variety of topics and learning as much as I can about the world around me.

Research Topics

Soil Moisture

Advancing the understanding of soil-water-vegetation dynamics by extracting “signatures” from field and satellite soil moisture data.

Education

Ph.D. candidate in Hydrology

UC Santa Barbara & San Diego State University

2021 – Present

Committee: Hilary McMillan, Trent Biggs, Kelly Caylor, Naomi Tague

MSc. Watershed Science

San Diego State University

2019 – 2021

Committee: Hilary McMillan, Trent Biggs, Alicia Kinoshita

B.Eng. Civil Engineering

Kyoto University, Japan

2015 – 2019

Advisor: Takahiro Sayama at Disaster Prevention Research Institute

Work

Teaching Associate & Graduate Assistant

San Diego State University

2019 – Present

Summer Research Fellow

Laboratory Assistant

Teaching Assistant

Kyoto University

2019

Press


Voices From The Community

A nuanced model of soil moisture illuminates
plant behavior and climate patterns

Grasses are spendthrifts, forests are budgeters,
in a nuanced account of plant water use