about me

Education

  • Duke University, Aug 1992 – May 1996, Bachelor of Science in Engineering (Civil Engineering)
  • University of Texas at Austin, Sep 1996 – Dec 1997, Master of Science in Engineering (Civil & Environmental Engineering)
  • University of California at Santa Barbara, Sep 2008 – Jun 2014, PhD Candidate in Bren School of Environmental Science and Management

Professional Experience

Key Projects

  • MPAS-Hydro: Advancing NSF-NCAR Community Water Prediction Systems, NCAR, 2025-2026 (PI)
  • Integrated Water Prediction, Availability, and Assessments Cooperative Agreement, USGS Water Mission Area, 2024-2029 (PI)
  • Development and Implementation of a Statewide Hydrologic Assessment Tool from Cloud Seeding Operations in Idaho, 2023-2026 (Co-I)
  • Enhancing the Hydrological Drought Monitoring Capability of the US Drought Monitor, University of Nebraska Lincoln and NASA, 2022-2026 (PI)
  • A Community Testbed Project for High-Resolution Hydroclimate Science, Simulation, and Application, U.S. Geological Survey, 2022-2024 (Co-I)
  • Expanding the Water Prediction Spectrum: Building Water Temperature Modeling Capability into the LIS-Hydro Coupled Prediction System, NASA, 2021-2026 (PI)
  • Research and Development for the NOAA National Water Model Version 3.0, NOAA, 2021-2022 (PI)
  • Improving Snow and Streamflow Simulation in the National Water Model by Leveraging Advanced Mesonet Observations from the Northeastern United States, NOAA, University at Albany, Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab, 2019-2021 (Co-I)
  • Experimental Framework for Testing the National Water model: Operationalizing the Use of Snow Remote Sensing in Alaska, NOAA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2018-2020 (PI)
  • Improving subseasonal water supply prediction across the Western U.S. through assimilation of remotely sensed snow cover, snow albedo, and snow water equivalent in the NOAA National Water Model, NOAA, National Snow and Ice Data Center, 2018-2020 (PI)
  • An integrated, observation-driven hydrological modeling system using LIS and WRF-Hydro enabled by ESMF, NASA, 2016-2020
  • An integrated hydrological modeling system for high-resolution coastal applications, U.S. Naval Research Center Laboratory, 2016-2018
  • National Water Model Initial Operating Capability and Model Development Team, U.S. National Weather Service, 2014-current
  • National Flood Interoperability Experiment, Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI) and U.S. National Water Center, 2015
  • Los Angeles Integrated Regional Water Management Plan Update, RMC Water and Environment, Geosyntec Consultants, 2011-2012
  • Water Security and Climate Change, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2008-2012
  • A Clear Blue Future, Natural Resources Defense Council, 2008-2009
  • Green Solutions Water Quality Assessment for Los Angeles County, Community Conservancy International, Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, 2007-2010
  • Ballona Wetlands Restoration Project, California Coastal Conservancy, 2007-2009
  • Los Angeles County-Wide Methodology for Prioritizing Structural BMP Implementation: Guidance for Strategic Storm Water Quality Project Planning, Geosyntec Consultants, Heal the Bay, Los Angeles County, 2005-2006
  • California Legacy Project, State of California Resources Agency, 2001-2002

Publications

  • Butler, Z., Good, S., Hu, H., Chen, X., & Dugger, A. (2025). Sequential Precipitation Input Tagging (SPIT) to Estimate Water Transit Times and Hydrologic Tracer Dynamics Within Water-Tagging Enabled Hydrologic Models. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 17(10), Article e2024MS004765. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024MS004765
  • Sobhaninia, S., Meerow, S., Dugger, A., Hopson, T., He, C., & Wilhemi, O. (2025). Where should the green go? A systematic literature review of methods for siting green infrastructure to mitigate rising heat and stormwater risks in cities worldwide. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 128790. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2025.128790
  • RafieeiNasab, A., Fienen, M., Omani, N., Srivastava, I., Dugger, A. (2025). Ensemble Methods for Parameter Estimation of WRF-Hydro. Water Resources Research, 61, e2024WR038048. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR038048
  • Abolafia-Rosenzweig, R., Gochis, D., Schwarz, A., Painter, T.H., Deems, J., Dugger, A., Casali, M. and He, C. (2024), Quantifying the Impacts of Fire-Related Perturbations in WRF-Hydro Terrestrial Water Budget Simulations in California’s Feather River Basin. Hydrological Processes, 38: e15314. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.15314
  • Hu, H., Leung, L. R., Dominguez, F., Gochis, D., Chen, X., Good, S., et al. (2024). Integrating a water tracer model into WRF-Hydro for characterizing the effect of lateral flow in hydrologic simulations. Water Resources Research, 60, e2023WR034938. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR034938
  • Abolafia-Rosenzweig, R., He, C., Chen, F., Zhang, Y., Dugger, A., Livneh, B., & Gochis, D. (2024). Evaluating Noah-MP simulated runoff and snowpack in heavily burned Pacific-Northwest snow-dominated catchments. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129, e2023JD039780. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JD039780
  • Hughes, M., Jackson, D. L., Unruh, D., Wang, H., Hobbins, M., Ogden, F. L., et al. (2024). Evaluation of retrospective National Water Model Soil moisture and streamflow for drought-monitoring applications. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129, e2023JD038522. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JD038522
  • Felfelani, F., Hughes, J., Chen, F., Dugger, A., Schneider, T., Gochis, D., Traylor, J.P., Essaid, H. (2024). Simulation of groundwater-flow dynamics in the U.S. Northern High Plains driven by multi-model estimates of surficial aquifer recharge, Journal of Hydrology, Volume 630, 2024, 130703, ISSN 0022-1694, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.130703
  • Cosgrove, B., D. Gochis, T. Flowers, A. Dugger, F. Ogden, T. Graziano, E. Clark et al (2024). NOAA’s National Water Model: Advancing Operational Hydrology Through Continental-scale Modeling. JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association 60 (2): 247–272. https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.13184
  • Walker, C. L., Siems-Anderson, A., Towler, E., Dugger, A., Gaydos, A., Wiener, G. (2024). Towards development of a roadway flood severity index, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Volume 27, 2024, 101218, ISSN 2590-1982, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2024.101218.
  • Shin, S., Gronewold, A. D., Fry, L. M., Dugger, A., & Kessler, J. (2024). Evaluating surface and subsurface fluxes in hydrological models to advance basin-scale operational water supply forecasting. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 69(11), 1539–1556. https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2024.2378100
  • R. M. Rasmussen, F. Chen, C.H. Liu, K. Ikeda, A. Prein, J. Kim, T. Schneider, A. Dai, D. Gochis, A. Dugger, Y. Zhang, A. Jaye, J. Dudhia, C. He, M. Harrold, L. Xue, S. Chen, A. Newman, E. Dougherty, R. Abolafia-Rosenzweig, N. D. Lybarger, R. Viger, D. Lesmes, K. Skalak, J. Brakebill, D. Cline, K. Dunne, K. Rasmussen, and G. Miguez-Macho (2023). CONUS404: The NCAR–USGS 4-km Long-Term Regional Hydroclimate Reanalysis over the CONUS. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 104, E1382–E1408, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0326.1.
  • Turner, T., Bart Jr., H., McCormick, F., Besser, A., Bowes, R., Capps, K., DeArmon, E., Dillman, C., Driscoll, K., Dugger, A., Hamilton, G., Harris, P., Hendrickson, D., Hoffman, J., Knouft, J., Lepak, R., Lopez-Fernandez, H., Montana, C. G., Newsome, S., Pease, A., Taylor, C., Welicky, R. (2023). Long-Term Ecological Research in Freshwaters Enabled by Regional Biodiversity Collections, Stable Isotope Analysis, and Environmental Informatics. BioScience, Vol 73, Iss 7, 479–493, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad039
  • Towler, E., Foks, S. S., Dugger, A. L., Dickinson, J. E., Essaid, H. I., Gochis, D., Viger, R. J., and Zhang, Y. (2023). Benchmarking high-resolution hydrologic model performance of long-term retrospective streamflow simulations in the contiguous United States, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 1809–1825, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1809-2023
  • Mascaro, G., Hussein, A., Dugger, A., Gochis, D. (2022). Process-Based Calibration of WRF-Hydro in a Mountainous Basin in Southwestern US, Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 59(1): 49–70. https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.13076
  • Lahmers, T.M., Kumar, S., Rosen, D., Dugger, A., Gochis, D., Santanello, J., Gangodagamage, C., and Dunlap, R. (2022). Assimilation of NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory snow measurements for improved hydrological modeling: A case study enabled by the coupled LIS/WRF-Hydro system. Water Resources Research, 58, e2021WR029867. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR029867
  • Lahmers, T.M., Hazenberg, P., Gupta, H., Castro, C., Gochis, D., Dugger, A., Yates, D., Read, L., Karsten, L., and Wang, Y. (2021). Evaluation of NOAA National Water Model Parameter Calibration in Semi-Arid Environments Prone to Channel Infiltration. Journal of Hydrometeorology, https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-20-0198.1
  • Tijerina, D., Condon, L., FitzGerald, K., Dugger, A., Forrester, M., Sampson, K., Gochis, D., Maxwell, R. (2021). Continental Hydrologic Intercomparison Project (CHIP), Phase 1: A Framework for Large-Scale Hydrologic Model Comparisons. Water Resources Research, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR028931
  • Viterbo, F., Mahoney, K., Read, L., Salas, F., Bates, B., Elliott, J., Cosgrove, B., Dugger, A., Gochis, D., and Cifelli, R. (2020). A Multiscale, Hydrometeorological Forecast Evaluation of National Water Model Forecasts of the May 2018 Ellicott City, Maryland, Flood. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 21, 475–499, https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-19-0125.1
  • Lahmers, T.M., Gupta, H., Castro, C.L., Gochis, D.J., Yates, D., Dugger, A., Goodrich, D., and Hazenberg, P. (2019). Enhancing the Structure of the WRF-Hydro Hydrologic Model for Semi-Arid Environments. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 20, 691–714, https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-18-0064.1
  • Xue, Z.G., Gochis, D., Yu, W., Keim, B., Zang, Z., Sampson, K., Dugger, A., Sathiaraj, D., Swarzenski, C., Ge, Q. (2018). Modeling Hydroclimatic Change in Southwest Louisiana Rivers. Water, 10(5), 596, https://doi.org/10.3390/w10050596
  • Salas, F., Somos-Valenzuela, M., Dugger, A., Yu, W., David, C., Ding, D., Maidment, D., Gochis, D., Clark, E., Nawajish, N. (2018). Towards Real‐Time Continental Scale Streamflow Simulation in Continuous and Discrete Space. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 54(1): 7‐ 27, https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.12586
  • Kennedy, M., McKenzie, D., Tague, C., Dugger, A. (2017). Balancing uncertainty and complexity to incorporate fire spread in an eco-hydrological model. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 26, 706-718, https://doi.org/10.1071/WF16169
  • Garrison, N., Sahl, J., Dugger, A., Wilkinson, R. (2014). Stormwater Capture Potential in Urban and Suburban California, Issue Brief, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pacific Institute.
  • Tague, C. and Dugger, A. L. (2010). Ecohydrology and Climate Change in the Mountains of the Western USA – A Review of Research and Opportunities. Geography Compass, 4: 1648-1663, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2010.00400.x

Teaching and Service

  • Instructor for CUAHSI WRF-Hydro Training Workshop (2015-2021) and AMS Introduction to WRF-Hydro Short Course, AMS Annual Meeting (January 2020)
  • University teaching assistant or lab instructor: Geographic Information Systems (graduate level), Earth Systems Science (graduate level), River Systems (graduate level), Fluid Mechanics (undergraduate level), Water Quality (undergraduate level)
  • Member of the CUAHSI Hydroinformatics Committee (2018-current)
  • Member of National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) Scientific Review Committee (2019-2021)

Awards

  • NCAR Diversity Award for the RAL Minority-Serving Institute Ambassador Pilot Program, 2024
  • NCAR Scientific and Technical Advancement Award for the National Water Model Development Team, 2017
  • John Muir Conservation Award for GreenInfo Network, 2007
  • ASCE MLAB Outstanding Public/Private Sector Civil Engineering Project for the Los Angeles County Structural BMP Prioritization Methodology, 2006
  • ESRI Special Achievement Award for GreenInfo Network, 2006

Community Code Development