Professor Steve Margulis receives NASA NIP Award
C&EE Assistant Professor Steve Margulis is one of 31 researchers nationwide to receive the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s coveted New Investigator Program (NIP) award. Established in 1996 and issued every one-and-a-half years to investigators at academic institutions and non-profit organizations, the awards encourage the integration of earth science research by scientists and engineers at an early stage of their professional careers. The program encompasses all areas of research and development in earth system science, applications, technology, as well as associated activities in education, science communication, and interdisciplinary endeavors. The NIP places particular emphasis on the use of earth remote sensing in prospective research and education projects.
Professor Margulis’ proposed project selected for award is “Estimation of distributed snowpack characteristics with passive microwave observations and physically-based snow models using an ensemble data assimilation approach.” It is known that cold land processes play a significant role in the climate system and water resources through water stored in snowpacks. Yet these processes are not well understood. Prof. Margulis seeks to develop an ensemble data assimilation framework allowing optimal merging of remote sensing data from satellites with snow process models in order to obtain estimates of distributed snowpack characteristics. The primary goal is to prove the feasibility of the data assimilation approach for snowpack characterization using microwave, thermal infrared, and visible remote sensing observations. The project is novel in its use of both an advanced data assimilation scheme as well as a combination of passive remote sensing observations. Prof. Margulis hypothesizes that the synergistic benefits of using several remote sensing observations in the assimilation framework will significantly improve the estimation of snowpack characteristics over traditional inversion techniques. He will test the framework’s feasibility through applications in the eastern Sierra Nevada and Colorado. The developed framework will be used in initiatives aimed at integrating remote sensing observations and hydrologic models into undergraduate and graduate engineering curriculums as well as educating practitioners of water resources planning about the potential of incorporating data products derived from NASA satellite observations into their decision making.