Lauren Herwehe

Faculty Advisor:  John O'Loughlin

Current Research 

My dissertation research falls at the intersection of climate hazards, agricultural livelihood adaptations, remote sensing, and political geography. In the span of the last decade, Mozambique has been impacted by several of the most devastating cyclones to ever hit the African continent as well as the onset of a civil conflict fueled by grievances over socioeconomic and political  inequality. I aim to understand the mechanisms by which these multiple exposures posed by cyclones and civil conflict, and potential agricultural adaptations to these shocks, have led to agricultural land use and land cover change as well as land disputes and cooperation. I am doing this with a mixed-method comparative approach, using remote sensing and qualitative fieldwork to compare multiple provinces based on cyclone and civil conflict exposure and subsequent outcomes.

More Info: Outside of this research, I work at the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC), where I am the Data Product Team Lead for the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) and NOAA Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMI/SSMIS) satellites, leading a team that publishes all data from these missions.

Recent Publications

• Quarderer, Nathan, Wasser, Leah, Herwehe, Lauren, Gold, Anne U., Montaño, Patricia A., Halama, Katherine., Balch, Jennifer. Fostering the Development of Earth Data Science Skills in a Diverse Community of Online Learners: A Case Study of the Earth Data Science Corps. Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education (2024).
• Mahood, Adam L., Joseph, Maxwell B., Spiers, Anna I., Koontz, Michael J., Ilangakoon, Nayani, Solvik, Kylen K., Quarderer, Nathan, McGlinchy, Joe, Scholl, Victoria M., St. Denis, Lise A., Nagy, Chelsea, Braswell, Anna, Rossi, Matthew W., Herwehe, Lauren, Wasser, Leah, Cattau, Megan E., Iglesias, Virginia, Yao, Fangfang, Leyk, Stefan, Balch, Jennifer K. Ten simple rules for working with high resolution remote sensing data. Peer Community Journal,(2023): 4(e4).
• Wasser, Leah, Palomino, Jenny, Herwehe, Lauren, McGlinchy, Joe, Quarderer, Nathan, Balch, Jennifer, Joseph, Maxwell, Student Directed Learning in the Open Earth & Environmental Data Science Classroom. OSF Preprints, (2022). https://osf.io/preprints/osf/xdj4z
• Herwehe, Lauren, and Scott, Christopher A. Drought adaptation and development: small-scale irrigated agriculture in northeast Brazil. Climate and Development 10.4 (2018): 337-346.
• Lee, Ryan H., Herwehe, Lauren, and Scott, Christopher A. Integrating Local Users and Multitiered Institutions into the IWRM Process. Sustainability of Integrated Water Resources Management. Springer, Cham (2015): 365-386.
• Herwehe, Lauren. Developing Alaska’s Oil and Gas Resources: How Should the U.S. Proceed? The Professional Geologist. November/December (2011): 15-16.

Updated May 2024