AWARDS

Adwoa Amankwaa and Fahim Hasan, both Ph.D. candidates in civil and environmental engineering, have each been awarded $10,000 grants from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) through the Colorado Water Center (CWC). 

Amankwaa’s grant will fund her research on improving remote sensing actual evapotranspiration estimation on a field scale. 

“My research gives farmers, irrigation managers, and water resource professionals actionable insights for crop selection, irrigation scheduling, and crop water management efforts using high-resolution unmanned aerial system (UAS) imagery within the METRIC modeling framework,” said Amankwaa.

The grant will support her research infrastructural costs as well as travel costs to conferences to present research findings.

Hasan’s grant will support his research on investigating the historic and future drivers of groundwater pumping in Colorado, utilizing physics-informed AI, remote sensing, and statistical modeling techniques.

“My PhD dissertation focuses on analyzing groundwater pumping for irrigation across the Western United States using satellite and in-situ datasets, geospatial data science, and machine/deep learning,” said Hasan. “This USGS-CWC funded project allows me to specifically concentrate on Colorado’s groundwater—one of the region’s most vital freshwater resources for sustainable agriculture.”

Hasan is a member of the Remote Sensing Hydrology Research Group, where he is advised by Assistant Professor Ryan Smith. Smith’s research integrates geophysical and remote sensing methods with process-based modeling and machine-learning approaches to advance the understanding and management of groundwater systems.