Episode 53: Sierra Snowpack
“I want people to pay close attention to what is happening to our mountain snowpack because this is the natural, free reservoir that provides anywhere from 3 to as much as 33 million acre-feet in a given year.”
A conversation with Dr. Safeeq Khan (UC Merced) about the Sierra Nevada Snowpack, snow-vegetation-fire interactions, and snow futures. Released May 19, 2023.
guests on the show
Safeeq Khan
Dr. Safeeq Khan is a Cooperative Extension Specialist in Water and Watershed Sciences at the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resource. He is also an Adjunct Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Merced. Dr. Khan is the director of the Forest Ecohydrology & Watershed Systems (FEWS) Lab at UC Merced, which focuses on understanding watershed processes under changing environment and climate. He is leading cutting-edge research on developing alternative forest management and land use solutions for building water and watershed resilience.
Dr. Khan's research broadly focuses on understanding the interaction between climate and ecosystems to inform land and water management. He uses data-driven numerical models as a research tool to aid in the understanding of watershed systems and predicting hydrological change. He has led several projects, from investigating the impact of non-native tree species and groundwater overdraft on streamflow in Hawaii to mapping hydrological vulnerabilities to climate change in the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Khan is also a co-director of UC Merced’s first Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems (INFEWS) grant that focuses on connected wildland-storage-cropland subsystems in California. Connect with Dr. Khan here.