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Noah Schmadel

Noah Schmadel is a hydrologist at the USGS Oregon Water Science Center.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Sustainable management of water resources including both water quality and quantity
  • Integrated hydro-terrestrial constituent modeling and data collection strategies to forecast regional water quality outcomes
  • Dominant river corridor components including hyporheic zones, floodplains, and ponded waters
  • Hydrologic and chemical alterations caused by land use and water resource decisions

ENGINEERING AND MODELING TOOLS

  • Developing regional water quality models and improving their physical basis (SAS, SPARROW)
  • Hydroinformatics including data mining, standardization, preservation, and transferability (R, Python, Matlab, SQL Server, Visual Basic)
  • Contaminant and heat transport modeling through surface water and groundwater systems including calibration, sensitivity analyses, and numerical and analytical solution techniques (COMSOL Multiphysics)
  • Identifying cumulative and relative effects of river corridor processes (NHD)
  • Assessing hydro-chemical alterations caused by land use and water resource decisions (NLCD, NWIS)
  • Stream channel and watershed characterization techniques using remotely-sensed imagery and topographic analyses (LiDAR-derived DEMs, thermal infrared imagery, ArcGIS)

 

 

Professional Experience

  • Hydrologist, October 2020-Present, U.S. Geological Survey, Oregon Water Science Center

    - Providing predictive modeling to support national to local water availability challenges

  • Research Hydrologist, Mendenhall Fellow, August 2019-Present, U.S. Geological Survey, Earth System Processes Division, Reston, Virginia, Advisory board: Drs. G Schwarz, C Konrad, D Wolock, and J Harvey

    - Dynamic national hydro-terrestrial constituent model • Build and calibrate non-linear multi-regression models to make seasonal regional water quality predictions • Use physically-based approaches

  • Postdoctoral Researcher, February 2017-August 2019, U.S. Geological Survey, Earth System Processes Division, Reston, Virginia, Advisor: Dr. Judson Harvey

    - National river corridor water quality model

    • Built and calibrated nonlinear least squares regression models to make regional water-quality predictions

    • Used physically-based approaches to explain and improve regional observations

Education and Certifications

  • Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, 2006

             

  • Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 2009, Advisor: Dr. Bethany Neilson

             

  • Doctor of Philosophy in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 2014, Advisor: Dr. Bethany Neilson

Science and Products

Seasonally dynamic nutrient modeling quantifies storage lags and time-varying reactivity across large river basins

Nutrients that have gradually accumulated in soils, groundwaters, and river sediments in the United States over the past century can remobilize and increase current downstream loading, obscuring effects of conservation practices aimed at protecting water resources. Drivers of storage accumulation and release of nutrients are poorly understood at the spatial scale of basins to watersheds. Predictin
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Water Resources, Oregon Water Science Center

The river corridor’s evolving connectivity of lotic and lentic waters

River corridors supply a substantial proportion of the fresh water for societal and ecological needs. Individual functions of flowing (lotic) streams and rivers and ponded (lentic) waterbodies such as lakes and reservoirs are well-studied, but their collective functions are not as well understood. Here we bring together nationally consistent river corridor datasets to characterize the contribution
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Water Resources

Accounting for temporal variability of streamflow in estimates of travel time

Retention, processing, and transport of solutes and particulates in stream corridors are influenced by the travel time of streamflow through stream channels, which varies dynamically with discharge. The effects of streamflow variability across sites and over time cannot be addressed by time-averaged models if parameters are based solely on the characteristics of mean streamflow. We develop methods
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Water Resources, Washington Water Science Center

Climate change causes river network contraction and disconnection in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon, USA

Headwater streams account for more than 89% of global river networks and provide numerous ecosystem services that benefit downstream ecosystems and human water uses. It has been established that changes in climate have shifted the timing and magnitude of observed precipitation, which, at specific gages, have been directly linked to long-term reductions in large river discharge. However, climate im
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Water Resources

Low threshold for nitrogen concentration saturation in headwaters increases regional and coastal delivery

River corridors store, convey, and process nutrients from terrestrial and upstream sources, regulating delivery from headwaters to estuaries. A consequence of chronic excess nitrogen loading, as supported by theory and field studies in specific areas, is saturation of the biogeochemically-mediated nitrogen removal processes that weakens the capacity of the river corridor to remove nitrogen. Region
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Water Resources, John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis

Geomorphic controls on hyporheic exchange across scales - Watersheds to particles

We examined the relationship between fluvial geomorphology and hyporheic exchange flows. We use geomorphology as a framework to understand hyporheic processes and how these processes change with location within a stream network, and over time in response to changes in stream discharge and catchment wetness. We focus primarily on hydrostatic and hydrodynamic processes—the processes where linkages t
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Water Resources

Improving predictions of fine particle immobilization in streams

Fine particles are critical to stream ecosystem functioning, influencing in-stream processes from pathogen transmission to carbon cycling, all of which depend on particle immobilization. However, our ability to predict particle immobilization is limited by: (1) availability of combined solute and particle tracer data and (2) identifying parameters that appropriately represent fine particle immobi
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Water Resources

Solute transport and transformation in an intermittent, headwater mountain stream with diurnal discharge fluctuations

Time-variable discharge is known to control both transport and transformation of solutes in the river corridor. Still, few studies consider the interactions of transport and transformation together. Here, we consider how diurnal discharge fluctuations in an intermittent, headwater stream control reach-scale solute transport and transformation as measured with conservative and reactive tracers duri
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Water Resources

Co-located contemporaneous mapping of morphological, hydrological, chemical, and biological conditions in a 5th-order mountain stream network, Oregon, USA

A comprehensive set of measurements and calculated metrics describing physical, chemical, and biological conditions in the river corridor is presented. These data were collected in a catchment-wide, synoptic campaign in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Cascade Mountains, Oregon, USA) in summer 2016 during low-discharge conditions. Extensive characterization of 62 sites including surface wate
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Water Resources

Spatial and temporal variation in river corridor exchange across a 5th order mountain stream network

Although most field and modeling studies of river corridor exchange have been conducted a scales ranging from 10’s to 100’s of meters; results of these studies are used to predict their ecological and hydrological influences at the scale of river networks. Further complicating prediction, exchanges are expected to vary with hydrologic forcing and the local geomorphic setting. While we desire predi
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Water Resources

Small ponds in headwater catchments are a dominant influence on regional nutrient and sediment budgets

Small ponds—farm ponds, detention ponds, or impoundments below 0.01 km2—serve important human needs throughout most large river basins. Yet the role of small ponds in regional nutrient and sediment budgets is essentially unknown, currently making it impossible to evaluate their management potential to achieve water quality objectives. Here we used new hydrography data sets and found that small pon
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Water Resources, Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center, John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis
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oregon water science center

USGS Oregon Water Science Center Lunchtime Seminar Series (Winter, 2022 has concluded)

The role of USGS Water Science Centers in western water resource challenges
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Oregon Water Science Center
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USGS Oregon Water Science Center Lunchtime Seminar Series (Winter, 2022 has concluded)

The role of USGS Water Science Centers in western water resource challenges
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River Corridor hot spots for biogeochemical processing: a continental scale synthesis

Rivers are the veins of the landscape, providing environmental benefits that are disproportionately high relative to their aerial extent; shedding flood waters, hosting aquatic ecosystems, transporting solutes and energy-rich materials, and storing and transforming pollutants into less harmful forms. From uplands to the coasts, rivers facilitate key biogeochemical reactions that cumulatively influ
By
John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis
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River Corridor hot spots for biogeochemical processing: a continental scale synthesis

Rivers are the veins of the landscape, providing environmental benefits that are disproportionately high relative to their aerial extent; shedding flood waters, hosting aquatic ecosystems, transporting solutes and energy-rich materials, and storing and transforming pollutants into less harmful forms. From uplands to the coasts, rivers facilitate key biogeochemical reactions that cumulatively influ
Learn More

Science and Products