CEE Seminar: A Platform for the Next Generation of Data-driven, River and Watershed-centric Modeling - Veins of the Earth

McDonnell Douglas Engineering Auditorium (MDEA)
Jon Schwenk, Ph.D.

Reseach Scientist
Earth and Environmental Science Division
Los Alamos National Lab (LANL)

Abstract: The tandem rise in satellite-based observations and computing power has changed the way we (can) see rivers across Earth’s surface. Global datasets of river and river network characteristics at unprecedented resolutions are becoming common enough that the sheer amount of available information presents problems itself. For example, how uncertain are global datasets of river width, and how are these uncertainties spatially distributed? Which competing product(s) should I use for my modeling application? Fully exploiting this new knowledge requires linking these geospatial datasets to each other within the context of a river network. In order to cope with this wealth of information, we are developing Veins of the Earth (VotE), a flexible platform designed to synthesize knowledge about rivers and their networks into an adaptable and readily-usable form. VotE is not itself a dataset, but rather a database of relationships linking existing datasets that allows for rapid comparison and exports of river networks and watersheds at arbitrary resolutions. VotE’s underlying river networks (and drainage basins) are based on MERIT-Hydro. I will discuss some of the technical challenges in amassing and synthesizing these datasets and show the utility of the platform for rapid construction of machine learning models of streamflow. I will also demonstrate how VotE can help answer questions of dataset selection by comparing global river width products.

Bio: Jon Schwenk earned his B.S. in civil engineering from Tennessee Technological University before spending two years working as a stream restoration engineer-in-training at Springburn, LLC. He went on to study meandering river dynamics en route to a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, where he became fascinated by unlocking the information in satellite images to discover new phenomena of river dynamics. He then joined Los Alamos National Lab’s Earth and Environmental Science Division as a postdoc and has since converted to a scientist there. Schwenk now works on a much broader set of problems, but still enjoys creating tools for manipulating, analyzing, and modeling large datasets and continues to study rivers whenever he can.