Keith Musselman
- (He/him)
- Assistant Professor
- GEOGRAPHY
Hydrology • Climate change • Hydrometeorology • Remote sensing • Modeling
I’m excited about empirically based, theoretically grounded, and societally attuned science! My research goals are to assess climate change impacts on water availability, to measure and model ecohydrologic cold region processes across scales, and to develop approaches in collaboration with diverse stakeholder groups to inform sustainable adaptation and decision strategies.
I am committed to building a diverse research community, where everyone feels they belong, and we collectively benefit from our differences. I am motivated by the excitement of scientific discovery and the thrill of collaborative research. Being more inclusive will improve our knowledge and better serve the decisions of individuals and organizations. I believe these efforts can foster better outcomes for society and our environment.
The goal of my research is to evaluate the availability of freshwater in seasonally snow-covered environments, to explain the mechanisms by which water resources develop and respond to perturbations in natural and managed systems, and to study the response of systems to changes in water availability. Societal, ecological, and economical dependencies on the seasonal delivery of snowmelt runoff motivate my research that serves to improve predictive capacity and inform resource management practices. I work with ecologists, social scientists, biologists, climate scientists, and biogeochemists to support multidisciplinary measurements and modeling spanning continuums of water and energy gradients in cold regions. Headwaters serve as our mountain water towers and offer climate change refugia for critically important ecosystem services. I strive to integrate environmental and climate change issues with resource sustainability issues to deliver scientific knowledge on water resources that is of effective use and benefit to diverse societal interests.
See more about the Arctic Rivers Project.
Education
- PhD : Civil Engineering, University of California at Los Angeles, 2012
- MS: Hydrology, University of Arizona, 2006
- BS: Geology, University of Vermont, 2003
Awards
- Outstanding Mentor Award, CU Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), 2021
- Best Paper Presentation, Western Snow Conference, 2019
Current students
- Sydney Carr, grad student
- Diamond Ebanks, Postdoc
- Colin Gilbert, grad student
- Elizabeth Woolner, grad student
Publications