Peter A. Troch
Education | PhD Hydrology, Ghent University, Belgium (1993)
Dr. Peter A. Troch studied Agricultural Engineering at the University of Ghent, Belgium, and graduated with Highest Distinction. He holds a MSc degree in Systems Control Engineering and he obtained his Ph.D. degree in Hydrology in 1993 at the same university. Dr. Peter A. Troch is since November 2005 Professor of Surface Water Hydrology at the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Science of The University of Arizona. Prior to coming to Tucson, he was Chair of the Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. From 1996 to 1999 he was associate-professor at the Laboratory of Hydrology and Water Management (LHWM) of the University of Gent. From January until August 1992 he was scientific researcher at the Water Resources Program of Princeton University. He was involved in several international airborne and space borne remote sensing experiments in hydrology. He was scientific coordinator of a European Commission 5th FP RTD project on Data assimilation within a unifying modeling framework for improved river basin water resources management (DAUFIN) and organized international workshops on Catchment scale hydrological modeling and data assimilation (CAHMDA) in September 2001 (Wageningen), October 2004 (Princeton), January 2007 (Melbourne) and July 2010 (Lahsa). His current research involves hillslope to catchment scale hydrological processes, seasonal, decadal and climate predictions of water availability in semi-arid river basins, as well as developing research infrastructure to investigate Critical Zone processes across climate gradients. He is also studying the role of vegetation in catchment-scale hydrological response. He was Science Director of Biosphere 2 from 2012 to 2022, and is editor of Water Resources Research. He has published over 180 papers in refereed international journals dealing with (flash) flood forecasting, catchment classification and similarity, land slide and debris flow modeling, remote sensing applications in hydrology and data assimilation, climate variability and climate change impacts on water availability, and the role of vegetation on hydrologic partitioning at catchment scales. He is the recipient of the 2011 John Dalton Medal, awarded by the European Geophysical Union for distinguished research in hydrology evaluated as an earth science, and the 2011 Boussinesq Lecturer at the Netherlands Royal Academy of Sciences, Amsterdam. He is AGU Fellow since 2015 and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment and Social Justice.