Feb 2026
Our paper on snow darkening in the Great Salt Lake Basin has been accepted to Water Resources Research
Paper
Hi! I’m Michelle
I study seasonal snow hydrology, exploring this particular intersection of climate and water using modern computational geospatial methods. My current projects use physical models informed by remote sensing retrievals to simulate snow dynamics in the mountains.
News
Feb 2026
Had a blast presenting our work at the SnowHydro 2026 conference in Jaca, Spain
Conference
Dec 2025
AGU 2025 conference in New Orleans, LA
Conference
Sep 2025
Presented at the ASO Inc. Annual Workshop in South Lake Tahoe, CA
Conference
Aug 2025
Happy to collaborate on work shared in two oral presentations at IGARSS 2025 in Brisbane, Australia
Conference
July 2025
Joined the University of Utah faculty as a Research Assistant Professor
Milestone
May 2025
Presented at the Western Snow Conference in Bozeman, MT!
Conference
Dec 2024
Presented our work on remote sensing informed snow modeling at AGU 2024 conference in Washington DC!
Conference
Oct 2024
Selected for a 3 year NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program award to study the role of albedo in snowmelt.
Award
Sep 2024
ASO Inc. Annual 2024 Workshop in South Lake Tahoe, CA!
Conference
Jun 2024
Our paper on surface mass balance of debris-covered glaciers has been accepted to the Journal of Glaciology.
Paper
Feb 2024
Joined the Snow Hydrology Research-to-Operations Lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate.
Career
Dec 2023
Our dataset supporting Six Seasons of Stereo Snow Depth Maps has been published on NSIDC.
Dataset
Dec 2023
Our paper on Six Seasons of Stereo Snow Depth Maps has been published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Paper
Oct 2023
Defended my PhD Thesis ‘Quantifying seasonal snow using very-high-resolution stereo optical satellite images’. 🎓
Milestone
Apr 2023
Received the Dr. James E. Church Award for Best Student Presentation at the Western Snow Conference in Flagstaff, AZ.
Award
Projects
Snowmelt Modeling Informed by Satellite Albedo
Incorporating satellite-derived albedo into a snow energy balance model changes how we simulate melt in dust-affected headwaters with implications for water supply forecasting.
modeling
remote sensing
snow
albedo
High-Resolution Snow Depth from Satellite Stereo Imagery
Commercial satellite stereo imagery can produce 3 meter snow depth maps across consecutive winters with accuracy comparable to airborne lidar, a promising approach for mountain snow monitoring.
remote sensing
snow depth
satellite
stereophotogrammetry
lidar
Snow Trends, Extremes, and a Warming Climate
We examine characteristic shifts in the days when snow actually accumulates and melts to better understand how storm days are changing in a warming climate and how extreme events affect snowpack.
climate
snow
atmospheric rivers
western US
Collaborations
Surface Mass Balance for Debris-Covered Glaciers from Satellite Stereo
A satellite stereo DEM time series approach estimates surface mass balance for debris-covered glaciers, disentangling elevation change signals from ice flow dynamics to isolate geodetic mass balance.
Converting Snow Depth to Snow Water Equivalent Using Climatological Variables
A regression model using snow depth, day of water year, winter precipitation, and temperature continentality converts depth measurements to SWE estimates at locations without weather instrumentation, outperforming existing bulk density equations.