2025 Student Competition: 

Click here to submit your entry or view 2025 entries:
 https://padlet.com/msprenger2/favorite-hydrology-papers-2025-j2tv9iwsyxg3ucto

Questions? Reach out to Christa Kelleher at kellehec "at" lafayette "dot" edu.

2024 Student Competition: 

2024 Student Competition Entries: 

https://padlet.com/msprenger2/favorite-hydrology-papers-zizp874lba9p3bhk

2024 Student Competition Winners:



Dr. Paige Becker
Postdoctoral scholar
​Colorado School of Mines
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Saurav Bhattarai
PhD student
​Jackson State University
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Franziska Clerc-Schwarzenbach
PhD Student
University of Zurich, Switzerland
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Dr. Jeeban Panthi
Postdoctoral scholar
​Kansas State University
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Belle Holthuis
Master's student
Wageningen University

Past Student Competitions and Winners (2023):

Ben Daniels; University of Maryland, USA

Spatial distribution of rain gardens impacts stormwater management performance
Green infrastructure such as rain gardens are increasingly implemented to manage stormwater quantity and quality, but uncertainty remains regarding the optimal locations of these practices to meet environmental goals. In this research, I developed a hydrologic model to test the effects of different spatial distributions of rain gardens on storm event hydrology, using a 3.1 km2 suburban catchment in Columbia, MD, as a case study. My results indicate that a more dispersed distribution of rain gardens results in lower peak flows and less stream flashiness compared to clustered distributions.

Mariel Jones; University of Minnesota, USA

Peatland Responses to Climate Change Driven Decreases in Snowfall
Peatlands play a critical role in the global carbon balance, but their ability to regulate methane fluxes in controlled by changing winter and spring hydrology. My research focuses on the intersection of climate and catchment science by leveraging long term field data from peatland-dominated headwater catchments to examine the influence of changing winter snow patterns on peatland function. Here, we demonstrate that hydrologic connectivity in the wetland system regulates streamflow using fill-spill mechanisms and that soil frost plays a critical role in the partitioning of snow melt into surface and sub-surface flows.

Elnaz Hatami Bahman Beygloo; 
Cukurova University, Turkey

A Paleo Perspective of Upper SAVA River Streamflow
​This research combines PDSI and streamflow data from 8 gauges in the upper Sava River Basin (USRB) to reconstruct streamflow patterns over two millennia. By firstly aggregating the streamflow gauges into a regional time series and reducing the dimension of scPDSI using the SVD method, and secondly conducting a stability test the stable scPDSI cells were identified. These cells, along with the streamflow vector, underwent stepwise linear regression analysis to finally reveal that the first 500-year period experienced more frequent and severe droughts compared to other periods in the past two millennia, while the latest period exhibited higher fluctuations and a significant number of drier years.

Akshay Sunil; IIT Bombay India

Adaptive (re)operations facilitate environmental flow maintenance downstream of multi-purpose reservoirs
The trade-offs between human water needs and environmental considerations have always been challenging for water resources management and governance. Multi-purpose reservoirs present a particularly challenging decision context where multi-sectoral water and energy demands have to be balanced, while also considering the instream water requirements downstream. A systematic framework to evaluate the trade-offs between demand satisfaction, hydropower production and satisfaction of minimum environmental flows (MEFs) would help reservoir operators better understand the consequences of various operational choices. In this study, we designed two formulations of a multi-purpose reservoir operation problem; one that prioritized MEF (PF_MEF) releases over demand satisfaction and another that did not (PF_nMEF). We applied the framework to the Nagarjuna Sagar (NS) reservoir in southern India. 

Kshitij Dahal; Arizona State University, USA

Flames and Feedback: Interconnected Impacts of Forest Fires on Climate Change and Hydrological Processes
The complex web of cause and effect that governs the impacts of forest fires on climate change and hydrological processes. It illustrates how factors like fire ignition, carbon release and temperature can interact to create short-term, medium-term, and long-term impacts on the ecosystem. By exploring the feedback loop between climate change and forest fires, this plot underscores the urgent need to take action to mitigate the devastating effects of wildfires on our planet.