Hoori Ajami
University of California-Riverside, CA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
More than 16% of the world's people rely on snowpack and glaciers for water. Yet how mountain snow and rain soak into the ground and recharge aquifers (underground water stores) is poorly understood.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Engineering
- Topics
groundwater recharge
mountain system recharge
mountain-front recharge
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Measure water balance dynamics, water residence times and bedrock groundwater's contribution to streams in the Kaweah River watershed using hydrometric observations and hydrochemical tracers.
- Constrain groundwater flow paths from Sierra Nevada mountain aquifers to Central Valley aquifers and improve recharge estimates with an integrated hydrologic model informed by multiple field observations.
- Quantify how groundwater recharge responds to climate variability, drought and vegetation change in a mountain-valley aquifer system.
- Develop SMART-G, an efficient groundwater module for the Soil Moisture and Runoff simulation Toolkit, to simulate surface water–groundwater interactions in mountain watersheds.
More about the research
In California, precipitation on the Sierra Nevada is the main natural source of groundwater for the Central Valley, a major farming region. Drought and shrinking snowpack are expected to change recharge rates, threatening water security and agriculture. Groundwater feeds about two-thirds of streamflow in dry mountain catchments, but recharge rates and flow paths from mountains to valley aquifers remain uncertain.
Why it matters
Farms and communities in California's Central Valley depend on groundwater recharged from Sierra Nevada snow and rain, and drought and snowpack changes threaten that supply. Better recharge estimates and the SMART-G modeling tool could help local and state agencies make groundwater management and policy decisions and plan for climate variability.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Daniella Rempe
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Test whether slow refilling of deep subsurface moisture, rather than lasting tree physiological damage, explains why forest growth and streamflow stay suppressed after drought ends, using a multiyear deep-moisture record spanning before, during, and after a drought.
Jonghyun Lee
University of Hawaii at Manoa, HI·Earth & Environmental Science
Build hybrid surrogate models from neural operators, networks that imitate expensive simulations, coupled through an open-source framework so groundwater–ocean exchange is simulated quickly while conserving mass at the land–sea boundary.
Catalina Segura
Oregon State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Determine how burning of vegetation alone versus vegetation and soil changes snow accumulation, snowmelt, streamflow and underground water storage in burned Willamette National Forest watersheds, using snow surveys, geophysics and soil infiltration tests.
The school
University of California-Riverside: 21 labs on PI Pages, $232M a year on research, 328 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.