Mariel D Nelson

Hi! I'm a fifth-year PhD student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. I study geomorphology and remote sensing. I measure the detailed shape of landscapes and analyze how they change over time.

For my graduate research, I use repeat drone-based lidar surveys to understand river bank erosion along the sandy, coastal Trinity River, the longest river with a watershed located entirely in Texas. I have also collaborated on drone mapping projects that use Utah landscapes as an analogue for Mars alongside current and former UT Planetary Surface Processes Group members Michelle Tebolt and Morgan Carrington.

During my PhD, I worked for a year as an aquifer science intern for the Edwards Aquifer Authority. In Fall 2022, I was a teaching assistant in the upper-level course Python in Geoscience Research under Dr. Zoltan Sylvester. In Fall 2021, I was on a research assistantship mapping fluviolacustrine sandstones and processing them into 3D digital models for sedimentology teaching and research.

I have an undergraduate degree in geophysics and a minor in geospatial information systems from the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at UC Berkeley. I wrote my undergraduate thesis under Prof. Bill Dietrich on shallow landslides caused by the 2017 California floods. During and after my undergraduate degree, I worked for Dr. Larry Hutchings at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab processing geothermal data and installing seismometers in Taiwan. I then spent two years working as a hydrologic field technician and data wrangler for Prof. Daniella Rempe at the Eel River Critical Zone Observatory.

I love to chat; send me an email!