Research Highlights

Click on description to access manuscripts.
A complete list of publications classified by research subject is available [here] and on Dr Muller's [Google Scholar Profile]

Land Grabs

Nature Communications:
​What are the consequences of transnational agricultural land deals on water security?

[Press release]

PNAS
​What are the consequences of large transnational agricultural land deals on food security?
​
[Press release]

Environmental Research Letters
​​What are the consequences of transnational agricultural land deals on forest cover and biodiversity?

[Press release]

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Water and Armed Conflicts

PNAS 
​Will changing rainfall distribution increase or decrease the propensity for armed conflicts?
​
[ScienceBreaker]
[Press Release]

​PNAS
​How do Violent Conflicts affect Land and Water Resources? Evidence from Syria

​[Brookings]
[Nature Asia]
[SNF Horizons]

Nature Communications
​How does refugee migration redistribute global water stress?

Nature Food

What effect did wheat export disruptions from Ukraine have on calorie intake in vulnerable countries?

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Transboundary Groundwater 

National Science Foundation Grant ICER 1824951: "CNH: What does it take to collaborate over transboundary groundwater resources?"

Water Resources Research: 
How did an international agreement emerge over fossil groundwater in the Arabian Desert?

Advances in Water Resources:
What role can trust play in the emergence of transboundary groundwater treaties?

Water Resources Research: 
​How do economic and hydro-geologic differences between countries affect their propensity to collaborate over groundwater?

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Transboundary Rivers

Water Resources Research:
Was the Ganges Water Treaty effective at reducing downstream river salinity?

Journal of Hydrology :
How should the Ganges Water Treaty be re-designed to account for climate change?

Hydrology and Earth Syst. Science:
What made the flow of the Jhelum river in the transboundary Indus basin decrease by 50% in the last 20 years?

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Water and human rights

Industry Research Grant: "Realizing Human Rights for Water in Industry"

How to reconcile the broad and universal nature of the human right to water with the local realities of water security and water governance? 

Our new framework addresses this question to facilitate a preemptive implementation of the human rights to water in the context of water-intensive industrial operations, such as mining, commercial agriculture, hydropower beverages and textiles. 

• Check out the video of our session at World Water Week 2022, and access the white paper describing the framework here
• ​We recently presented this work at the Social Forum of United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva (Switzerland). Read more about it here.
• We are hosting a side event at the UN Water conference at the United Nations HQ in New York City on Thursday March 23 2023 at 3:30-4:45 pm ET, where we will present the framework in discussion with a roundtable panel of experts from the industry, academia and civil society. Read more about it [here]

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Socio-Hydrology of Climate Change

National Science Foundation Grant EAR 2142967: "CAREER: CAS-Climate: Sociohydrology to link climate change and its societal impacts"
[Press]

Environmental Research Letters:
​On how increasingly variable rainfall and higher temperature might conspire to produce even more variable stream flows!

Environmental Research Letters:
On changing nitrogen loads in a Northeastern Greenland stream and what it tells us about the thawing and greening of the Arctic.

Water Resources Research (Invited):
On the compatibility of economics and hydrology to study coupled human-water systems. 

Our Approach

Questions that we Ask

• How are socio-environmental systems changing in data-scarce regions?
• What are the key drivers of these changes? To what extent can they be attributed to exogenous (e.g. global climate) or endogenous (poor policy) sources?
• Will there be more more conflicts in a changed climate where water resources will be more variable? What role (if any) will physical landscape processes play in that relationship?
• What does it take for cooperation to emerge over internationally shared water resources? What role does trust and information access play in that process?
• When does human (trade, migration, information) and hydrologic (rivers) connectivity enhance societal resilience to climate shocks?
• How can new information paradigms (e.g., remote sensing, modeling and social sensing) and modern data analytics be used to address critical information gaps for improved water, health and energy policy?​

Methods that we develop

We combine data science, hydrologic modeling and economics to monitor, evaluate and predict rapidly changing coupled human water systems in data-scarce regions. An overview of our approaches and focus areas can be found in a recently published review paper in Water Resources Research [click here for access].

A non exhaustive sample of the methods that we developed is listed below -- please click on the keywords for example publications. A full list of publications is provided in the "Publications" tab of this website.

Data analytics:

• Remote sensing of cropland
• Remote sensing of reservoirs (optical imagery)
• Coastal Remote sensing (Synthetic Aperture Radar)
• Remote sensing of precipitations
• Geostatistics
• Bayesian model evaluation (value of information)
• webGIS and DEM analysis

Hydrologic modeling:

• Stochastic, process-based modeling of baseflow distribution
• Regression-based predictions in ungauged catchments
• Groundwater modeling
• Baseflow recession
• Intra-annual and inter-annual variability

Economics

• Difference-In-Difference analysis
• Regression Discontinuity
• Instrumental Variable
• Non-cooperative game theory
• Micro-economic theory 

Funded Projects

• pulte.nd.edu/projects/realizing-human-rights-for-water-in-industry/US National Science Foundation, Dynamics Coupled Human Natural Systems grant #1824951: "What does it take to collaborate over transboundary groundwater resources?"
• US National Science Foundation, Hydrological Science (joint with Human Geography) grant # 2142967: "CAREER: CAS-Climate: Sociohydrology to link climate change and its societal impacts" 
• BHP Group, Ltd: "Realizing Human Rights for Water in Industry"

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