Research

Current Projects

My research focuses on studying how ecosystems are adapting and changing in response to climate, and what kind of feedback loops exist between topography and natural environments. My recent work has focused on assessing ecosystem resilience to ongoing climate shifts. This has involved the development of new methods, as well as looking at broader scale relationships between water and vegetation.

I have several ongoing research projects based on high-resolution passive microwave data for High Mountain Asia with the goal of producing updated estimates of snow depth and changes in the cyrosphere over the past ~30 years, both following on previous methodologies and developing new ones based on novel clustering techniques for dealing with high-dimensional topographic and climatic data.

I am currently running my own DFG-funded project which builds upon much of my previous work, particularly that which focused on monitoring snow. The “Quantifying the Influence of Snowmelt on River Hydrology in High Mountain Asia (STRIVE)” project focuses on mapping where, when, and how water enters river systems in Nepal. This work will use a combination of GNSS-Reflectometry, satellite data, and in-situ river monitoring.

Doctoral Work

My doctoral work in Potsdam focused on exploring patterns and trends in snow depth throughout High Mountain Asia region using passive microwave data. This work resulted in several papers, listed on my Publications page.

Thesis: Smith, T (2018) - Decadal changes in the snow regime of High Mountain Asia, 1987-2016, Doctoral Thesis (summa cum laude), Universität Potsdam, 142. pp. (Advisor: Bodo Bookhagen) https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/opus4-ubp/frontdoor/index/index/year/2018/docId/40712

Masters Work

My Masters work at UC Santa Barbara focused on mapping glaciers in Central Asia. This resulted in one peer-reviewed publication detailing an algorithm for semi-automatically mapping glacier outlines.

Thesis: Smith, T (2014) - Glacial Response to Climate Change in the Tien Shan Mountain Range of Central Asia, Masters Thesis, UC Santa Barbara, 116. pp. (Advisor: Bodo Bookhagen) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s21n2gc

Undergraduate Work

My undergraduate work at Middlebury College (Vermont) focused on two main projects: (1) mapping arsenic concentrations in Vermont, and (2) field mapping of volcanic deposits in Arizona. The arsenic work was eventually published here, and the geologic mapping was published here.

Thesis: Smith, T (2011) - Petrogenesis of Highly Evolved Rocks in the Springerville Volcanic Field, Eastern Arizona, Bachelor Thesis, Middlebury College, 98. pp. (Advisors: Ray Coish and Chris Condit)