Climate Change

Biography

Marisa Escobar is an environmental engineer with over a decade of experience emphasizing interdisciplinary linkages between socio-ecological and physical processes and conducting climate change analysis. Her current work is related to applying SEI’s Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP). Dr. Escobar works in California and Latin America to support a growing WEAP user community in the region. Examples of this work include the use of WEAP to define water management alternatives for the Santa Clara Water District in California, to support negotiations around water benefit sharing mechanisms in Andean Rivers, and to integrate a glacier routine within WEAP as part of a World Bank supported investigation in Peru. Dr. Escobar has done substantial project work to link WEAP to ecosystem assessment tools related to anadromous fish management in California rivers under an EPA STAR Grant, focusing on analysing the trade-offs between power production and other water management objectives.

Research Interest

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