Prairie Research Institute hydrologist Allison Goodwell has been selected for an early career award recognizing outstanding contributions to hydrology through research, education, or societal impacts.
The Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Award was awarded by AGU, the world's largest Earth and space science association. Recipients are early-career scientists who demonstrate outstanding contributions to hydrologic sciences, impact everyday lives, improve their communities, or contribute to solutions for a sustainable future.
Goodwell’s research focuses on understanding interactions and processes in ecohydrologic systems based on models and data.
“I feel very fortunate to receive this award,” Goodwell said. “I am also very grateful for the support from all my mentors, colleagues, students, and those who supported my nomination. It has been valuable to work within the critical zone science community, and more recently within the Illinois State Water Survey to contribute to interesting and fun research activities and broaden my perspective.”
She uses information theory and other data-driven methods to study weather, soil, vegetation, and hydrologic time-series variables.
“I have been involved in the National Science Foundation-funded critical zone projects where I have used data from weather stations, flux towers, stream chemistry observations, and root-soil systems to understand dynamics of intensively managed agricultural landscapes. I have also studied drivers of observed versus modeled and satellite-based evapotranspiration in the same landscapes, and the extent to which different types of models are replicating observed interactions,” she said.
Goodwell earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2017 in civil and environmental engineering and was an assistant professor in civil engineering at the University of Colorado Denver from 2018-2023. She is currently an associate research scientist at ISWS.
“This work goes towards understanding processes, bounds on predictability, and types of interactions that go beyond simple couplings and correlations in hydrologic systems,” she said.
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The Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign provides scientific expertise and transformative research to the people of Illinois and beyond. PRI is home to the five state scientific surveys: the Illinois Natural History Survey, Illinois State Archaeological Survey, Illinois State Geological Survey, Illinois State Water Survey, and Illinois Sustainable Technology Center.
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