Introduction

CHRISTOPHER SHULERAssistant Specialist, WRRC

E-mail: cshuler@hawaii.edu

CHRISTOPHER SHULERAssistant Specialist, WRRC

Christopher Shuler

E-MAIL: CSHULER@HAWAII.EDU

EDUCATION:

  • PhD, Earth Sciences, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2019

FIELDS OF INTEREST:

  • Surface and groundwater hydrology
  • Hydrologic monitoring
  • Modeling
  • Data science
  • Web-applications

RESEARCH PROJECTS

UH-ASPA Hydrologic Monitoring Network

ASPA-UHWRRC weather station, stream gauge, and monitoring well network instruments.
Hydrologic datasets are essential for the design of sustainable water supply systems and the prediction or detection of acute threats to drinking water quality or availability. We developed a hydrologic monitoring network consisting of 21 instruments including weather stations, stream gauges, and monitoring well dataloggers on the Island of Tutuila, American Samoa.

A Participatory and Model Based Approach to Assessing Groundwater Recharge Under Contemporary and Future Climate Scenarios: Tutuila, American Samoa

Illustration of present day model calculated average-annual groundwater recharge at 20 m cell-size resolution. Inset map shows detail of 1) flow routing effects, seen as higher recharge squares at the bottom of drainage channels, 2) direct infiltration from leaking water lines, seen as linear zones of higher infiltration, and 3) MFR zones seen as larger patches of high- infiltration.
A water budget approach using the Soil Water-Balance-2 model was applied to Tutuila Island in American Samoa. We also assessed potential future change in recharge by substituting rainfall and temperature projections from dynamically downscaled climate global climate model predictions and possible future land-cover scenarios developed with local stakeholders.

ASPA-UHWRRC Integrated Groundwater Modeling Framework

UH WRRC Director Tom Giambelluca visits one of the weather stations within the Tutuila Hydrologic Monitoring Network.
This work presents a collaborative modeling framework developed by participants at the American Samoa Power Authority and at the University of Hawai‘i Water Resources Research Center. The framework includes modular components including collection and analysis of climatic and streamflow data and development of a water budget model and groundwater model.

Ridge to Reef Management Implications for the Development of an Open-Source Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen Loading Model in American Samoa

Staff member from the American Samoa Coral Reef Advisory Group measuring streamflow to provide flow information used to calculate surface water nitrogen loading to the coastal zone.
We developed a dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) loading model by integrating commonly available datasets within a geospatial modeling framework for Tutuila, American Samoa. The model integrated an open-source water budget model, water sampling results, and publicly available streamflow data to predict watershed-scale DIN loading to the island’s entire coastline.