Sean W. Fleming

Sean W. Fleming Associate Program Manager, NASA Water Resources Program; Program Scientist, NASA Western Water Action Office Affiliation: NASA Ames Research Center/California State University Monterey Bay Division: Earth Science Division (SG), Atmospheric Science Branch (SGG) Email: sean.w.fleming@nasa.gov Professional Biography Sean supports relationship-building between NASA and the water resource practitioner and management community, through joint roles at the Western Water Action Office and Water Resources Program.  He is affiliated with the NASA Ames Research Center and California State University, Monterey Bay, through their ARC-CREST cooperative agreement. Prior to joining NASA, Sean spent over two decades in the public, private, academic, and nonprofit sectors.  He is a generalist with diverse interests and experience, ranging from mining exploration field work, to founding a data science startup, operational river forecasting at a hydroelectric utility, leading a team at the Meteorological Service of Canada, project and program management at Quantum Spatial/NV5 Geospatial, and R&D leadership and program management at the USDA-NRCS.  His work emphasizes holistic integration of multiple disciplines, perspectives, and components, like remote sensing, data science, process physics, and experiential human knowledge, into analysis and prediction algorithms that bridge gaps between theory and practice.  Sean is passionate about science outreach.  Examples include a trade book with Princeton University Press that attempted to do for rivers what A Brief History of Time did for cosmology, op-eds for Wired and Scientific American, public talks at venues ranging from ‘science pub’ events to the Smithsonian, and live radio and television interviews.  His water resource-related volunteerism has taken him to Mexico, Ukraine, Romania, Mauritania, and Kazakhstan. Education PhD, Geophysics, University of British Columbia, 2004 MS, Geology and Civil Engineering, Oregon State University, 1998 MS, Geophysics, Oregon State University, 1997 BSc, Geophysics, University of British Columbia, 1994 Research Interests River hydrology, hydrogeology, snow, glaciers, machine learning, climate, forecasting, complex systems, watershed management Selected Publications Fleming SW, Rittger K, Oaida Taglialatela CM, Graczyk I. 2024. Leveraging next-generation satellite remote sensing based snow data to improve seasonal water supply predictions in a practical machine learning-driven river forecast system. Water Resources Research, 60, e2023WR035785. Fleming SW, Watson JR, Ellenson A, Cannon AJ, Vesselinov VC. 2021. Machine learning in Earth and environmental science requires education and research policy reforms. Nature Geoscience, 14, 878-880. Fleming SW. 2021. Scale-free networks, 1/f dynamics, and nonlinear conflict size scaling from an agent-based simulation model of societal-scale bilateral conflict and cooperation. Physica A, 567, 125678. Fleming SW, Gupta HV. 2020. The physics of river prediction. Physics Today, 73, 46-52. Fleming SW, Goodbody AG. 2019. A machine learning metasystem for robust probabilistic nonlinear regression-based forecasting of seasonal water availability in the US West. IEEE Access, 7, 119943-119964. O’Neel S, Hood E, Bidlack AL, Fleming SW, Arimitsu ML, Arendt A, Burgess E, Sergeant CJ, Beaudreau AH, Timm K, Hayward GD, Reynolds JH, Pyare S. 2015. Icefield-to-ocean linkages across the northern Pacific coastal temperate rainforest ecosystem. Bioscience, 65, 499-512. Halverson M, Fleming SW. 2015. Complex networks, streamflow, and hydrometric monitoring system design. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 19, 3301-3318. Fleming SW, Wong C, Graham G. 2014. The unbearable fuzziness of being sustainable: an integrated, fuzzy logic-based aquifer health index. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 59, 1154-1166. Cunderlik JM, Fleming SW, Jenkinson RW, Thiemann M, Kouwen N, Quick M. 2013. Integrating logistical and technical criteria into a multi-team, competitive watershed model ranking procedure. ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, 18, 641-654. Moore RD, Fleming SW, Menounos B, Wheate R, Fountain A, Stahl K, Holm K, Jakob M. 2009. Glacier change in western North America: influences on hydrology, geomorphic hazards, and water quality, Hydrological Processes, 23, 42-61. Fleming SW. 2007. Artificial neural network forecasting of nonlinear Markov processes, Canadian Journal of Physics, 85, 279-294. Fleming SW, Whitfield PH, Moore RD, Quilty EJ. 2007. Regime-dependent streamflow sensitivities to Pacific climate modes across the Georgia-Puget transboundary ecoregion, Hydrological Processes, 21, 3264-3287. Fleming SW, Moore RD, Clarke GKC. 2006. Glacier-mediated streamflow teleconnections to the Arctic Oscillation, International Journal of Climatology, 26, 619-636. Haggerty R, Fleming SW, Meigs LC, McKenna S. 2001. Tracer tests in a fractured dolomite, 2, analysis of mass transfer in single-well injection-withdrawal tests, Water Resources Research, 37, 1129-1142. Fleming SW, Trehu AM. 1999. Crustal structure beneath the central Oregon convergent margin from potential field modeling: evidence for a buried basement ridge in local contact with a seaward dipping backstop, Journal of Geophysical Research, 104, 20431-20447. Press Releases New River Forecast Model Integrates Artificial Intelligence for Better Water Management in the West, https://www.farmers.gov/blog/new-river-forecast-model-integrates-artificial-intelligence-better-water-management-in-west The post Sean W. Fleming appeared first on NASA Science.