Description of Work:
Andrew is currently an assistant research scientist in the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and ESSIC at University of Maryland. His main goal is to understand how environmental variability and extremes influence global plant function and evaporation, and the consequent water cycle responses. This includes for managed vegetation (crops, rangeland forage) and natural vegetation. Drylands, such as in the western U.S., are a large focus of his work.
Andrew's current contribution to NASA missions:
-NASA ECOSTRESS Competed Science Team (Principal Investigator/Project Lead, 2022-Present): using high-resolution satellite-based land surface temperature to understand global ecosystem and vegetation response to drought.
-NASA Ecohydrology Program (Principal Investigator/Project Lead, 2025-Present): understanding the influence of rainfall pulses on vegetation and feedbacks on the atmosphere
-NASA Adaptation and Response in Drylands (ARID) Proposed Field Campaign (Co-lead, 2023-Present): a scoping study for a dryland field campaign under the NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program
-NASA Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) Incubator Mission (White Paper Co-lead, 2025-Present): contributing to land-atmosphere interaction components of the PBL mission
-NASA Earth Science to Action Contributions: partnering and working directly with U.S. Navy and western U.S. ranchers on range management
Andrew's research fits into the following themes:
-Hydrology under Variability and Drought: Soil-Plant Interactions, Land-Atmosphere Interactions
-Microwave Remote Sensing: Retrieval Algorithm Testing and Improvement, Soil Moisture, Vegetation Water Content, GNSS Field Sensors
-Dryland Ecosystem Function and Management: Adaptation and Response in Drylands (ARID) Field Campaign Planning
Brief Biography:
Andrew received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2021 working with Professor Dara Entekhabi on the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission. In 2016, Andrew graduated from Drexel University with B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering. Andrew was also a recruited member and co-captain of Drexel's Division I golf team. From 2021-2023, Andrew was a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow where he investigated the effects of rainfall frequency and intensity on global vegetation using NASA satellites (SMAP, MODIS, and OCO-2).