Biography:

I started to work for the Department of Hydrology and SAHRA in October 2004 after completing my MSIS at the University of Pittsburgh in the School of Information Sciences. While there, my focus was on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS), remote sensing, spatial data analysis and database systems.

Prior to my work in Geoinformatics I completed my MSc in Experimental Physics at the Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia) in 1988. Subsequently, I worked as a Research Assistant at the Department of Nuclear Physics and then as a Research Scientist in the Institute of Preventive and Clinical Medicine where my focus was on the spectrometry and dosimetry of ionizing radiation, diffusion processes of radioactive gasses and physical properties of radioactive aerosols. In 1998 I completed my PHD in Nuclear Physics.

Research:

My current work focuses on an application of geoinformatic technologies in hydrology, database systems and design, spatial and temporal data analysis and assimilation, distributed hydrologic modeling, climate variability and physical hydrologic processes.

Biography:

I am a Ph.D. student in the Hydrology and Water Resources Department with a minor in Applied Mathematics. My main area of expertise is novel applications of isotopes in surface water and vadose zone processes. I completed my M.S. also in the Hydrology department at the University of Arizona, where I used a suite of isotopic data to identify groundwater flow paths and density-driven flow in a playa lake basin in southern California. Prior to that I completed a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame and practiced for two years in industry. My Ph.D. work has involved several topics including quantifying changes in suspended sediment following wildfire, developing lab techniques to measure cosmogenic 32P and 32Si tracers in soil and water, and utilizing isotopes to determine flash flood composition and routing in a semi-arid climate.

Research:

I joined the Surface Water Hydrology Group in May, 2006, working in the Santa Catalinas Mountains, north of Tucson, AZ. I am using the stable isotopes of water to study the flow processes of the flash floods that come during the summer monsoon season. We have found that isotopes can delineate the timing and volume of flow contributions from individual sub-basins. Also, in spite of the steep, rocky terrain and high-rainfall in our response-dominated study area, we observe a significant contribution of pre-event water in the hydrograph peaks at the basin outlet; we attribute this to baseflow that was resident in the stream network prior to the storm event that is subsequently incorporated and advanced by the bore of the flash flood. I am also setting up a laboratory to measure these isotopes using recently developed equipment from Los Gatos, Inc.