Marisa’s work focuses on creating linkages between physical processes and socio-ecological systems.

She uses her expertise on water, including water quality, the physics of water, and the movement of water through watersheds, to produce information on the implications of decisions about water on the overall ecosystem. Her geographic focus is California (where she resides) and Latin America (where she is from). Exploring the linkages between water and the socio-ecological system in Latin America has resulted on the investigation of the energy-water-food nexus and of the role of hydropower in sustainable development.

Since joining SEI’s U.S. Centre in California in 2007, Marisa has used SEI’s Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP) as a primary tool for her analyses. In a major project funded by a STAR Grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, she has linked WEAP to ecosystem assessment tools to study anadromous fish management in California rivers, focusing on analyzing the tradeoffs between power production and other water management objectives.

Marisa also works to advance the use of WEAP in Latin America and to support a rapidly growing WEAP user community in the region. For example, as part of a World Bank-supported investigation of potential climate change impacts on water resources management in Peru, she developed a glacier accumulation and ablation routine and integrated it with WEAP rainfall-runoff modeling algorithms.

Also in Latin America, Marisa is using WEAP as an analytical tool to support negotiations around the definition of water benefit-sharing mechanisms in Andean Rivers, under funding from the global CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food.

Marisa has a B.S. in civil engineering from Javeriana University, in Bogotá, Colombia; an M.S. in civil and environmental engineering from Los Andes University, also in Bogotá; an M.Eng. in the same field from the University of California, Berkeley; and a Ph.D. in hydrologic sciences from the University of California, Davis.

Publications

• Building climate adaptation capacity in water resources planning: ‘Ríos del páramo al valle, por urbes y campiñas’ (Fact sheet - 2013)

• Water Management Adaptations to Prevent Loss of Spring-Run Chinook Salmon in California under Climate Change (Journal article - 2012)

• The nexus of water-energy-food (Book chapter - 2012)

• Evaluación de los impactos del cambio climático en la hidrología de montaña: Desarrollo de una metodología a través de un estudio de caso en los Andes del Perú (Policy brief - 2012)

• Simulating the implications of glaciers’ retreat for water management: a case study in the Rio Santa basin, Peru (Journal article - 2012)

• Un Marco de Apoyo a la Toma de Decisiones para Adaptación al Cambio Climático (Report - 2012)

• Differences in river ecological functions due to rapid channel alteration processes in two California rivers using the functional flows model, part 2 – model applications (Journal article - 2011)

• Modelling the hydrologic role of glaciers within a Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP): A case study in the Rio Santa watershed (Peru) (Journal article - 2011)

• Energy-Water-Climate Planning for Development without Carbon in Latin America and the Caribbean (Report - 2011)

• Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change on Mountain Hydrology: Development of a Methodology Through a Case Study in Peru (Book - 2011)

Complete list of publications »

Projects

• Water Resources Planning through Climate Change Capacity Building: “Ríos del páramo al valle, por urbes y campiñas”

  
  

• Improving Water Productivity and Reducing Water-Related Conflict in the Andes

  
  

• An Application of the Water-Energy-Land Use Framework to Understand Socio-Ecological Transformations in the Colombian Orinoco

  
  

• Reducing Climate Vulnerability through Adaptation in Planning Process in La Paz-El Alto, Bolivia

  
  

• Modeling the role of páramo in mountain hydrology under climate change

  
  

• Quito Vulnerability Study

  
  

• The Water-Energy-Food Nexus in the Inter American Development Bank's 2011 Sustainability Report

  
  

• Development Without Carbon

  
  

• Support for a national water plan in the Dominican Republic

  
  

• Protecting Chinook Salmon in California

  
  

• Adapting to the Loss of Glaciers in the Peruvian Andes

  
  

• Development of a Strategic Vision of SEI Activity in Latin America

  
  

• Preventing Loss of Ecosystem Services Provided by Chinook Salmon in California

  
  

• Climate change in the Sierra Nevada mountains: Implications for the management of hydropower facilities and aquatic ecosystems

  
  

• Supporting Long-Term Water Management Negotiations in the Klamath River Basin