ABE Biocomplexity Engineering seminar

Details

Speaker: Dr. Rafael Muñoz-Carpena

Title: ABE Biocomplexity Engineering: “Mechanistic modeling of the impact of rainfall pumping on solute remobilization from soils into runoff”

Bio: Dr. Rafael Muñoz-Carpena is a Distinguished Professor in Hydrology and Environmental Modeling at the University of Florida, USA. He earned MSc. and BSc. Agricultural Engineering degrees from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain), and a Ph.D. in Biological and Agricultural Engineering specialized in water resources (hydrology and sediment transport through vegetation) at North Carolina State University (USA) as Fulbright INIA/USDA scholar. His work focuses on integrated environmental systems modelling, including interactions between hydrological, ecological and human components. His maintains a very active international research program. In 2010 he started a long-term collaboration with OTS in Palo Verde National Park, Costa Rica where with NSF funding his team established a dense monitoring network with 120 sensors (15-minute readings for rain, stream flow, surface and ground water, and soil moisture and salinity), spatially distributed in 12 different stations encompassing the main landscapes within the Park. This large continuous database (2012-2018) combined with remote sensing and prior data at the larger Tempisque-Bebedero basin served to analyze changes and trends in hydrology and vegetation within the Park influenced by upstream land use and climate change. Currently, Dr. Muñoz-Carpena co-leads a transdisciplinary cohort of doctoral students (engineers, biologist, meteorologist, sociologist, lawyers) working as a team on the Tempisque and Palo Verde. His computer simulation model VFSMOD to study the effect of dense vegetation buffers as a surface runoff pollution control practice is widely used to design vegetative buffers in agricultural and urban settings, and as a component in higher-tier in long-term pesticide environmental assessments as part of the regulatory pesticide registration process in the USA and EU. Dr. Muñoz-Carpena is currently Editor-in-Chief (Americas) for Elsevier’s Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies (JIF:5.02). He has received numerous international recognitions including Fellow of AAAS and ASABE, ASABE John Deer National Gold Medal and ADS/Hancor National Soil and Water Engineering Award, 2013 National Postdoctoral Association Mentor Award, NC State/CALS 2021 Outstanding Alumni Award, and in 2015 he was elected as Foreign Member of the Royal Society of Engineering of Spain.

Web page: http://abe.ufl.edu/carpena