Christa Peters-Lidard is an American hydrologist known for her work on integrating land surface modeling and data assimilation, particularly with remotely sensed measurements of precipitation.

Early life

Peters-Lidard grew up in Chesterfield County, Virginia where she was fascinated about nature, learned that she was good at math, and that she liked earth science. As an undergraduate at Virginia Tech she worked on a project on aquifers and groundwater flow at the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

and at that point she realized that she wanted to be an earth scientist at

National Aeronautics and Space Agency The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

(NASA).

Education and career

Peters-Lidard has a B.S. in Geophysics from

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...

(1991). Subsequently she earned an M.A. (1993) and a Ph.D. (1997) in Civil Engineering and Operations Research from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. From 1997 to 2001, Peters-Lidar was an assistant professor at

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

. Following this she joined the hydrological sciences branch of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) at the Goddard Space Flight Center. In 2015, Peters-Lidar became the Deputy Director for Hydrosphere, Biosphere, and Geophysics works in the Earth Sciences Division at NASA

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...

. From 2011 to 2018 Peters-Lidar was the Chief Editor for the ''

Journal of Hydrometeorology The ''Journal of Hydrometeorology'' is a scientific journal published by the American Meteorological Society. It covers the modeling, observing, and forecasting of processes related to water and energy fluxes and storage terms, including interactio ...

.''

Research

Peters-Lidard's graduate work linked rainfall measurements with data from airborne sensors detecting rainfall. She also established a mathematical framework to link land-atmosphere models with remotely-sensed rainfall data, and considered the role of heat being released from soils on modeling energy fluxes. While at Georgia Institute of Technology, she used balloons to make measurements of boundary layers in the atmosphere. Peters-Lidard has had one Ph.D student, Feifei Pan, who estimated the amount of water in soils based on rainfall levels, and examined algorithms used to characterize variability in a region's topography.

Peters-Lidard led the team that built a high performance computing cluster that became NASA's Land Information System software (LIS). LIS was the co-winner of NASA's 2005 software of the year award. LIS allows land surface modeling and data assimilation and, working with Sujay Kumar, Peters-Lidard used this system to quantify soil moisture assimilation.

Selected publications

* * * *

Awards and honors

* Arthur S. Flemming Award (2007) *NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal (2012) *Fellow,

American Meteorological Society The American Meteorological Society (AMS) is the premier scientific and professional organization in the United States promoting and disseminating information about the Atmospheric sciences, atmospheric, Oceanography, oceanic, and Hydrology, hydr ...

(2012) * Fellow,

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's act ...

(2018)

Reference section

External links

* * Peters-Lidard's NASA Mainiac lecture, November 28, 2018, available on NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center'
YouTube channel

NASA's Land Information System software (LIS)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Peters-Lidard, Christa 1969 births Living people Fellows of the American Geophysical Union Virginia Tech alumni Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Women hydrologists NASA people