Masih Akhbari served as a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Watershed Sciences. He is interested in integrated water resources management; decision-making; conflict management; climate change effects on the hydrological cycle, environmental systems, and water resources; developing practical adaptation strategies to mitigate the potential effects of climate change and to reduce vulnerability of environmental systems.

The research project he participated in at the Center for Watershed Sciences was to develop an approach to incorporate anticipated climate changes into the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hydropower relicensing process.  He developed and calibrated a series of linked watershed hydrology, stream temperature, and reservoir quality simulation models to predict streamflow and temperature with regulated and unregulated conditions in the Yuba River watershed, California. He also developed Python scripts to link these models and run them for 150 years (1950-2100) on a daily timestep. He performed hydrologic and statistical analyses on the outputs of these models to estimate effects of future climatic nonstationarity and hydropower operation decisions on the regional hydrologic cycle, stream temperatures, thermal habitat, and coldwater species. 

Education

• Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Aug. 2012, Dissertation title: Models for Management of Water Conflicts – A Case Study of the San Joaquin Watershed

• M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Iran, Nov. 2005, Thesis title: Conflict Resolution Simulation Model in River Water Quality Management

• B.S. in Civil Engineering with emphasis on water, Islamic Azad University, Nadjaf Abad, Iran, Feb. 2002