Lake modeling
Lakes are highly sensitive indicators of climate change, responding rapidly to shifts in temperature, precipitation, and land use. Changes in lake thermal structure, water balance, and biogeochemistry directly affect ecosystem health, water quality, and downstream water resources. My research focuses on modeling lake energy and water balance to quantify how lakes respond to climate variability and environmental change. By integrating physical lake models with water-quality and biogeochemical components, I examine how climate forcing and watershed processes influence lake temperature, stratification, mixing, and nutrient dynamics. These modeling frameworks are used to interpret observations, evaluate past and future climate scenarios, and support lake management and resilience planning across a range of climatic settings.
Highlights
Modern and future lake changes in Peru
We developed and applied a physically based one-dimensional lake energy balance model to Lake Sibinacocha, a high-elevation tropical Andean lake to quantify how lake thermal structure responds to observed and projected twenty-first century warming. By combining in situ observations, satellite products, reanalysis data, and climate model projections, the study shows that deep tropical alpine lakes may exhibit muted warming in the early twenty-first century due to strong interannual variability, followed by rapid and uneven warming later in the century with important implications for stratification, evaporation, and ecosystem vulnerability.[GPC publication]
Digital twin water quality model of Indian Hills Lake, Missouri
My current postdoctoral research at Mizzou aims to build a process-based digital twin of lakes that links climate forcing, watershed inputs, and in-lake physical and biogeochemical dynamics. I will couple lake energy and water balance models with water-quality and ecological components to quantify how climate variability, land use, and management decisions influence lake temperature, stratification, nutrient cycling, and oxygen dynamics. These modeling frameworks are designed to support scenario testing and decision-relevant insights for lake management under future climate change.