Katharine Graham Dahm, Ph.D.
Dr. Katharine Graham Dahm is the Deputy Regional Director for Operations for the Rocky Mountain Region.
Career History and Highlights
Katharine Dahm serves as the Deputy Regional Director for Operations for the USGS Rocky Mountain Region (which includes the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming). In this position, she supports the Central Energy Resources Science Center, Colorado Water Science Center, Fort Collins Science Center, Geologic Hazards Science Center, Geology, Geophysics, and Geochemistry Science Center, Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center, New Mexico Water Science Center, USGS TRIGA Reactor, and Utah Water Science Center.
Katharine previously served as a Rocky Mountain Region Senior Scientist. That position served to link the Water Science Centers and Biological Science Center to the Region, working closely with leadership, partners, and science staff in the centers. Katharine led the USGS Colorado River Basin Actionable and Strategic Integrated Science and Technology (ASIST) initiative for the bureau. That initiative's team is responsible for the landscape-scale effort to accelerate USGS interdisciplinary science and application of advanced information management technology for complex stakeholder driven challenges related to the extreme drought conditions in the Colorado River Basin.
In addition to her previous role as Senior Scientist, from November 2021 to September 2022, Katharine served as Acting Director of the USGS Utah Water Science Center. That center collaborates with over 50 partners at Federal, state, tribal, non-governmental, academic, and private organizations within the State of Utah to monitor, assess, conduct targeted research, and deliver information on a wide range of water resources. The Utah Water Science Center provides real-time discharge at more than 150 gages statewide, monitors water levels across a statewide network annually, and engages in many relevant and unbiased scientific studies and modeling efforts. The center is the USGS lead for science and data collection fundamental to the management of Utah water resources including the Great Salt Lake, the Great Basin of western Utah, and the Colorado River Basin of eastern and southern Utah.
Katharine’s prior Federal experience includes managing the Water Infrastructure Operations and Maintenance Branch in the Bureau of Reclamation's Dam Safety and Infrastructure Directorate, Asset Management Division. Her team served as the bureau-lead and advisor for Reclamation's western water operations and water infrastructure facility management. For the Bureau of Reclamation, she also worked in operations, planning, design, and research including serving as the program manager for the WaterSMART West-Wide Risk Assessment Program and Reservoir Operations Program. Prior to joining the Department of the Interior, Katharine worked in the private industry as a consultant for the energy and mineral industries.
