January 13, 2011
HMT Welcomes Chengmin Hsu
HMT would like to welcome team member, Chengmin Hsu, a hydrologist hired in
September 2010 by the Earth System Research Laboratory's Physical Sciences
Division (PSD). Chengmin first became involved in HMT in the Fall of 2009
as a research assistant where he developed a mathematical method to
separate soil moisture data from satellite and thermal sensor observations.
The research results became a chapter in his dissertation; an important
experience that extended his know-how in remote sensing and GIS toward
exploration in land surface and atmosphere processes. Chengmin continues to
explore methods for mapping high-resolution soil moisture and has been
assigned to evaluate the performance of a hydrologic model with various QPF
and QPE inputs. He is also involved in a pilot study to create an
Enterprise Geographic Information System (eGIS) for PSD. This system will
be used for running various hydrologic models and also serve as the
platform in HMT for internal and external data links and system
interoperability between NOAA, the US Geological Survey, and the US Army
Corps of Engineers.
In his early career, Chengmin trained to be an architect. But after years
of practice, he felt that an individual building can contribute only
slightly to wellbeing and societal interests. No matter how elegantly
buildings are designed and constructed, they are just as vulnerable to
flooding and wildfire as dilapidated buildings. A so-called "green
building" also cannot halt extreme weather caused by climate change. After
several years of "thinking bigger and exploring deeper", Chengmin started
a new journey in geospatial technology in 2002 by entering the master of
engineering in the GIS program at the University of Colorado – Denver. He
earned a Ph.D. in civil engineering system in 2010 with a thesis entitled,
"Remote Sensing Applications for Environmental Management," which focused
on mapping natural phenomena and man-made features using geospatial
technology and statistical methods. In addition to soil moisture work,
Chengmin's dissertation explores deeply object-based concepts and their
application in wetland mapping and ATV trail detection. Chengmin believes
that the concept of object-based fuzzy rule theory can be used to verify
probabilistic forecasts resulting from ensemble techniques as well as
locally disruptive weather such as fog, thunderstorm initiation, surface
icing, flooding, assimilation of precipitation measurements, and fire
weather prediction.
Publications
- Hsu, C. (2010). Downscaling of Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) soil moisture using a thermal sensor and the physically-based models. In C. Hsu, Remote sensing applications for environmental management. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Colorado Denver, 2010) (pp. 103 - 122). Denver, Colorado, USA: UMI.
- Hsu, C. (2010, May/June). High-Resolution Soil Moisture Retrieval in the Platte River Watersheds. Colorado Water, 27(3), 26-29.