Mollie publishes first PhD paper in AGU's Water Resources Research
Figure 3 from the publication. “Overall Mean Percent Error at the HUC level for all nine models. Light to dark pink HUCs indicate an underestimation of percent surface water area with the magnitude of the underestimation increasing with the hue. Light to dark blue HUCs indicate an overestimation of percent surface water area with the magnitude of the overestimation increasing with the hue.”The paper, Effects of Climate and Anthropogenic Drivers on Surface Water Area in the Southeastern United States, was published on March 17, 2022 in Water Resources Research.
As summarized in the paper, “People and the environment rely on water to exist and thrive, especially water on the Earth’s surface because that is the easiest place to get it. The amount of surface water and where it is located is changing with the climate and changes in people’s water use, and our need for it is increasing. To plan ahead for future water needs, we need to better understand how the climate and people are changing surface water patterns both separately and together. To help improve our understanding of these changes, we modeled the amount of surface water in three different ways. First, we modeled based on climate data (like temperature and precipitation); second, based on human data (like land use and population); and third, based on both climate and human data together. We found that we could best model the amount of surface water if we used both climate and human data together, and that human data can explain a lot of the changes in the amount of surface water. These results mean that we can work to control changes in the amount of surface water by controlling human actions through planning and policies.”
Social Media Buzz:
So proud of my @NCSUgeospatial Ph.D. student, Mollie Gaines, on her 1st paper in @AGU’s WRR using data-driven models to estimate surface #water area based on #climate, land cover/land use, and #Landsat inundation datasets in the SE United States:https://t.co/PsrcEcu9W9 pic.twitter.com/wH3hHDuuLO
— Dr. Mirela G. Tulbure 🛰 🌎 + 🐍 + 🌊 (@MirelaGTulbure) March 28, 2022
Bibliographic Citation
Gaines, M. D., Tulbure, M. G., & Perin, V. (2022). Effects of climate and anthropogenic drivers on surface water area in the southeastern United States. Water Resources Research, 58, e2021WR031484. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR031484
Brooke Cox
She/Her/Hers
Undergraduate Researcher
I am an undergraduate student majoring in Environmental Science at North Carolina State University.