Extreme Events | Dr. Mauricio Zambrano-Bigiarini

Hidrodesafios 2025 Seminar

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On Wednesday, November 26th 2025, I participated as a speaker at the seminar “ ” organized by the Sanitation Services Concessionaire Company S.A. (ECONSSA Chile) with sponsorship from the Chilean Association for Water Rights (AChDA) and Fundación Chile.

This event took place from 8:30 hrs at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the Las Condes district, with the objective of addressing the future of the sanitation sector in a context of water scarcity and climate change, and analyzing the role of seawater desalination and wastewater reuse in confronting the water crisis.

My presentation was entitled “ ”, in which I addressed three key challenges for water resources in the Araucanía Region:

changes in the hydrological regime of mountain catchments and their impact on projected spring and summer streamflows,
selection of indices and timescales used to monitor droughts and the importance of linking them with droughts impacts on the territory,
the role of soil moisture in peak streamflows generated by intense storms, and preliminary results from an early flood warning system currently developed for critical basins of the Araucanía Region.

At the end of the day, representatives from the two presidential candidates debated the future of the healthcare sector in the context of water scarcity and climate change.

More information and the program for the event can be found at

Debate on proposals for the water and sanitary sector in Chile

SICyR 2025: Sessions HC2 and HC7

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Members of the participated in the , an event that brought together leading researchers, academics, and professionals from the social and natural sciences. The symposium took place on November 3-4 in Santiago, where the plenary sessions and workshops were held, and continued from November 5-7 in Viña del Mar, where the thematic scientific sessions took place.

Scientific Sessions

Between November 5th and 7th, I organized two thematic sessions. The first, HC7. Droughts: Monitoring, Propagation, and Impacts in a Changing Climate, was co-organized by Dr. Pablo Spennemann, an Argentinian professor with whom I have maintained an active collaboration since the , an initiative aimed at strengthening scientific exchange on drought in South America. The second session was HC2. Hydrological Processes in a Changing Climate, which I co-organized with Dr. Mauricio Galleguillos from Adolfo Ibáñez University, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue on hydrological processes in a changing climate context.

Furthermore, I gave an oral presentation titled “Understanding soil memory: how antecedent moisture modulates streamflow responses to precipitation events,” a collaborative work with Dr. Oscar Báez-Villanueva (University of Ghent, Belgium), Dr. Violeta Tolorza (formerly of UFRO), and student Héctor Garcés-Figueroa. This study addresses the influence of antecedent soil moisture on the hydrological response to precipitation events and is part of the Fondecyt Regular Project No. 1212071.

Similarly, some members of the presented the following work:

Héctor Garcés-Figueroa, a research assistant on the Fondecyt Regular project 1212071, gave an oral presentation on the work “Ahead of the Flood: Medium-Range Hydrological Forecasting for Southern Chilean Catchments” which explores the use of medium-range hydrological forecasts to improve flood anticipation in basins in southern Chile. He also co-authored the presentation by Dr. Zambrano-Bigiarini.
Rocío Muñoz, a member of the Observatory and a Civil Engineer from the University of La Frontera, presented a poster titled “Operational Monitoring of Soil Moisture Anomalies for Continental Chile”. This work makes a significant contribution to the development of tools for monitoring and analyzing soil moisture at a national scale, and is part of his doctoral thesis project.
Fernando Gimeno Molina, a doctoral candidate in the Doctoral Program in Natural Resources Sciences at the University of La Frontera, presented his research in poster format, titled “Soil Mapping Matters: Changes in High Streamflow Simulations through Spatial Soil Information”. His study highlighted the relevance of spatial soil information in modeling high-flow events, a key issue for flood risk management.

The presentations by the Kimün-Ko team generated considerable interest among the attendees, receiving positive and insightful feedback from researchers at various national and international universities. The quality of the work, along with the approach applied to the current challenges of climate change and water resource management, was widely recognized by the scientific community.

The Observatory’s participation in this symposium reaffirms its commitment to cutting-edge research and interdisciplinary collaboration, contributing relevant knowledge to build a more resilient society in the face of the impacts of climate change.

Drought Propagation

Finally, this international symposium allowed me to meet for the first time with Dr. Pablo Spennemann, an Argentinian researcher with whom I am investigating the mechanisms and timescales that control drought propagation in four Chilean river basins (Petorca, Mapocho, Cauquenes, and Trancura), from precipitation deficits to decreased soil moisture and flow rates, and the impact on vegetation.

Former and current Kimün-Ko members along with Dr. Mauricio Gellguillos (UAI), Giancarlo Casanova, DR(c) Emilia Figueiras (AR) y Dr. Pablo Spennemann

SICyR 2025: Course 'Using R for Spatiotemporal Data Analysis'

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

R Course: Spatiotemporal Data Analysis

On November 4th 2025, I taught the course Using R for Spatiotemporal Data Analysis: Application to Precipitation from CR2Met2.5, which was attended by undergraduate and graduate students, as well as public and private sector professionals.

Course Using R for Spatiotemporal Data Analysis: Application to Precipitation from CR2Met2.5

Después de la gran tormenta, ¿cómo rediseñaremos? (El Mostrador)

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I just published an opinion column in the newspaper El Mostrador on how we will redesign the infrastructure that have been affected by the big storm that hit the Central-South zone of Chile in the end of June of this year 2023.

In this column, I states that it is of vital importance that the design of future infrastructure works considers -at least- the estimation of flood risk maps, and that the use of floodplains (free of human settlements) be prioritized in the communal regulatory plans, floodplains that must be estimated using the best data and techniques available, to avoid future human, social and material tragedies.

For more information please visit:

My Caption

Management of global change impacts on hydrological extremes by coupling remote sensing data and an interdisciplinary modelling approach (NSFC190018)

Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Context and motivation

Climate change and rapid land-use transformation are reshaping hydrological regimes worldwide, intensifying droughts and floods while increasing pressure on already vulnerable watersheds. These challenges are particularly acute in regions where water resources sustain agriculture, forest production, hydropower, and rural livelihoods. At the same time, reservoir regulation and shifting land management practices further modify natural flow dynamics, often in ways that interact nonlinearly with climate variability. Understanding and quantifying these combined effects is therefore essential for advancing predictive hydrology and supporting adaptive water governance under global change. Within this context, this Chile–China collaborative project addresses the urgent need for integrated, process-based assessments of hydroclimatic and land-system interactions across contrasting socio-environmental settings.

Project description

This four-year research project (January December 2023) is funded by the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development ( ) under the call. This project aims to develop and apply a comprehensive hydrological simulation framework to eight pilot basins (four in Chile and four in China) that represent diverse hydroclimatic conditions and water management challenges. Using two complementary models of different structural complexity (SWAT+ and Liuxihe) the research will simulate key hydrological processes and disentangle the relative contributions of climate change, land-use change, water use, and reservoir operations over the past three decades and throughout the 21st century. Historical reconstructions and future scenarios (including climate projections and land-use pathways aligned with policy instruments such as NDCs) will be combined to assess impacts on floods and droughts. A novel Synergistic Effect Function (SEF) will be proposed to quantify the compounded influence of multiple drivers. The project further integrates stakeholder engagement in the selected basins to co-develop science-based recommendations for land-use planning and water resources management, fostering bilateral knowledge exchange and producing transferable methodologies for hydroclimatic