Teaching Faculty at CSES

CSES houses five faculty members from the Geological Science, Geography, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Civil Engineering departments. Each of the faculty teaches courses in their own departments and those that involve remote sensing are taught in the CSES classroom that doubles as a computer lab.

Courses taught by CSES Faculty at CU

Tom Chase, Assistant Professor of Geography
Research Interests
Our research involves modeling and observational studies of climate change, particularly as related to changes in landcover. The effects of landcover changes on natural circulation regimes such as ENSO and tropical monsoons and how these might interact with other climate change mechanisms are a focus right now. We use satellite data to better describe the land surface and changes in land cover over time in climate models. Observational studies include climate trends in monsoon regions, average tropospheric temperatures and in natural modes of variability. We also are looking into several climate feedback processes in the hydrological cycle which might serve to make global and regional climates less variable. An example of this is a convective regulatory mechanism on Minimum Arctic temperatures. Finally, we are doing work in societal perceptions of climate and climate change.
Research Sceintists: Peter Lawrence
Ph.D. Students: Eungul Lee and Mariyam Medovaya
Masters Student: Dave Kindig
Undergraduate Research Assistant: Thomas Morse

Vijay Gupta, Graduate Director, Hydrological Sciences Ph.D. Program,
Professor of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering
Research Interests
Rainfall, evaporation, transpiration, and runoff generation from hillslopes, and water transport on channel networks in river basins are highly variable in space and time. Despite this space-time complexity, observations show that the statistics of many coupled hydrologic phenomena in river basins exhibit power laws. Contemporary theoretical advances show that power laws describe self-similarity, or scale invariance, with respect to geometrical, statistical and dynamic properties of complex nonlinear systems. Four hydrologic examples are given to illustrate presence of power laws in data. What are the physical processes that give rise to observed power laws in these diverse hydrologic phenomena? A physical understanding of mean power-law relationships, and the fluctuations surrounding them, is necessary to address this question and to solve the long-standing problem of predicting flows in ungauged basin across multiple space and time scales. Our research is focused on answering this fundamental issue.
Ph.D. Student: Ricardo Mantilla
Masters Student: Megan McConnell
Post-Docs: Peter Furey and Keith Nordstrom

Konrad Steffen, Director of CIRES
Professor of Geography
Research Interests
Application of remotely sensed data using visible, thermal infrared, and passive and active microwave techniques for climate sensitivity studies in polar regions over cyospheric surfaces; microclimatological heat flux measurements over various surfaces; experimental measurements and instrument development for bi-directional reflectance measurements; experimental measurements of passive microwave signatures over cryospheric surfaces (sea ice and ice sheets).
Ph.D. Student: Russel Huff
Masters Student: John Maurer
Post-Doc: Khalid Hussein
Visiting Fellow: Noah Molotch

Carol Wessman, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Research Interests
My research interests are diverse, but they are linked by the common theme of understanding the relationships among ecological processes, the patterns they generate, and the effects of anthropogenic environmental changes across a range of spatial and temporal scales. Over the past decade, my work has concentrated on the biogeochemical impacts of woody plant encroachment in rangelands of the Southwestern United States. In recent years, I have expanded my interests to disturbance dynamics in subalpine forest and social-ecological systems in urban environments. My approach involves field studies, remote sensing methodologies investigating temporal and spatial heterogeneity in ecosystem properties, and linkages to landscape and ecosystem modeling. My work incorporates theory in ecosystem and landscape ecology, with a recent emphasis on resilience and complex system theory. Many emergent phenomena of ecosystems cannot be captured by ground measurements alone. Work by my lab group and my colleagues has demonstrated the importance of integrating fieldwork into the analysis and interpretation of remote sensing data and model development to achieve sufficient understanding of complex landscapes.
Ph.D. Students: Bryan Brandel, Jonathon Carrasco, Sarah Hinners,John Kineman
Former Graduate Student: Greg Asner