Publications

-In review-

Sam Anderson and Shawn Chartrand. "The streamflow response to multi-day warm anomaly events: Sensitivity to future warming and spatiotemporal variability by event magnitude".  (in review)

• Question: When, where, and by how much will the streamflow response to warm events change under near-term warming?  

Sam Anderson and Shawn Chartrand. "A century of variability of heatwave-driven streamflow in melt-drive basins and implications under climate change".  (in review)

• Question: How will the streamflow response to heatwaves change as the climate warms?  What are the implications for heatwave-driven flooding in spring?

-2023-

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Modelling the streamflow response to heatwaves across glacierized basins in southwestern Canada". Water Resources Research (2023)

• Question: When, where, and by how much do glaciers modify the streamflow response to heatwaves at regional scales?  What are the implications of climate change on the streamflow response to heatwaves?

• Links: [code]

White, Rachel H., Sam Anderson, James F. Booth, Ginni Braich, Christina Draeger, Cuiyi Fei, Christopher D. G. Harley, Sarah B. Henderson, Matthias Jakob, Carie-Ann Lau, Lualawi Mareshet Admasu, Veeshan Narinesingh, Christopher Rodell, Eliott Roocroft, Kate Weinberger, Greg West.  “The unprecedented Pacific Northwest heatwave of June 2021”.  Nature Communications. (2023)

• Question: What were the causes, context, and impact of the unprecedented Western North America heat wave in June 2021?

• Links: [code]

-2022-

Sam Anderson.  "Mountain glaciers as modifiers of streamflow in Western Canada: Insights from data analysis and machine learning". The University of British Columbia.  PhD thesis.

• Question: How much can we learn about the roles and importance of glaciers and glacier runoff through the analysis of historical streamflow data, rather than through the simulation of glacier runoff?

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  “Interpreting deep machine learning for streamflow modelling across glacial, nival, and pluvial regimes in southwestern Canada” . Frontiers in Water. (2022)

• How can the decision-making of a deep learning model be interpreted when predicting streamflow across different streamflow regimes?

• Links: [talk 1], [talk 2], [code]

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Evaluation and interpretation of convolutional long short-term memory networks for regional hydrological modelling".  Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. (2022)

• Question: How well can convolutional-LSTM neural networks map spatiotemporal climate data to streamflow at multiple stations?  When making predictions, where in space is the model most focused?  Does the model respond in a physically consistent way when the driving temperatures are made warmer or cooler?

• Links: [talk], [code]

-2020-

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Identification of local water resource vulnerability to rapid deglaciation in Alberta."  Nature Climate Change. (2020)

• • Question: If glacier runoff were to become a negligible component of streamflow, which communities would experience the largest change to water supply in Alberta?

  • [code]

-2019-

Mayaud, Jerome, Sam Anderson, Martino Tran, Valentina Radic. “Insights from self-organizing maps in the context of urban accessibility.”  Urban Science. 3.1 (2019).

• • Question: How is income inequality related to healthcare accessibility in a rapidly growing Canadian city?  How are elderly citizens impacted in particular?

-2017-

Wong, Michael, Kyle Holland, Sam Anderson, Shahriar Rizwan, ZhiCheng Yuan, Terence Hook, Diego Kienle, Prasad Gudem, Mani Vaidyanathan. "Impact of Short-Wavelength and Long-Wavelength Line-Edge Roughness on the Variability of Ultra-Scaled FinFETs."  IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices. 64.3 (2017): 1231-1238

• • Question: How does atomic-scale roughness influence the performance of nanoscale field effect transistors (ie: the physical 1's and 0's in computer chips)?

-2016-

Yuan, Zhi Cheng, Shahriar Rizwan, Michael Wong, Kyle Holland, Sam Anderson, Terence B. Hook, Diego Kienle, Serag Gadelrab, Prasad S. Gudem, and Mani Vaidyanathan. "Switching-Speed Limitations of Ferroelectric Negative-Capacitance FETs." IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices 63.10 (2016): 4046-4052.

• • Question: Ferroelectric layers used in negative capacitance field effect transistors operate on a different timescale as compared to the FET itself -- how does this timescale mismatch impact device performance?

-2024-

Sam Anderson. "Our federation helped make Alberta rich in water.  Now, that dam is breaking." The Globe and Mail. (2024)

-2023-

Sam Anderson, Jonas Eschenfelder, and Shawn Chartrand.  "How Arctic landscapes and Canadian cityscapes share a similar pattern."  The Conversation. (2023)

Sam Anderson. "Walking in the shadow of the valley of death: What glaciers and grief leave behind"  The Globe and Mail. (2023)

-2022-

Sam Anderson. "Glaciers are Western Canada’s best friends. We’ll need them against climate change – just as much as we’ll need each other."  The Globe and Mail. (2022)

-2020-

Sam Anderson. "From glacier to tap: Identifying local water resource vulnerability in Alberta, Canada."  Springer Nature Sustainability Community. (2020)

-2019-

Sam Anderson. Alberta Municipal Water Supply Overview [Data set].  Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3266447. (2019)

UBC EOAS (2022, June). "Lessons from Glaciers: EOAS PhD candidate publishes opinion piece in the Globe and Mail".  UBC EOAS. (Print)

Angela Kokott (2022, June). "770 CHQR: Afternoons with Rob Breakenridge". Global News.  (Radio Interview)

On Earth (2022, March). "On Earth with Sam Anderson - Geophysicist".  (Podcast)

Tashauna Reid (2021, January). "Melting ice and glaciers could lead to water crisis".  CBC News: The National.  (TV Interview)

Jordan Armstrong (2020, August).  "The impact of melting glaciers on Alberta's water supply".  Global National. (TV Interview)

Nancy Carlson (2020, August).  "CBC Edmonton News August 12, 2020".  CBC Edmonton.  (TV Interview at 27:00 minutes)

Andrew Brown (2020, August).  "CBC Calgary News August 14, 2020".  CBC Calgary.  (TV Interview at 18:00 minutes)

Sarah Ryan (2020, August).  "Study suggests retreating glaciers could impact Alberta municipal water supplies."  Global Edmonton News. (Print Interview)

Sarah Rieger (2020, August).  "Melting glaciers will bring instability to more than 1 million Albertans' water supply."  CBC Calgary.  (Print Interview)

Jason Herring (2020, August).  "Glacier loss will cause water shortages in Alberta: UBC study."  Calgary Herald.  (Print Interview)

Sachi Wickramasinghe (2020, August). "Deglaciation will cause water shortages for Alberta's Bighorn Dam and other sites." UBC Science News. (Print Interview)

-2024-

Sam Anderson and Shawn Chartrand.  "Heatwaves, streamflow, and climate change: Where and when will the streamflow response to warm anomalies change the most rapidly?"  Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Congress.  June 4, 2024.

• Question: Where and when is the streamflow response to warm anomalies most sensitive to climate warming?

Sam Anderson and Shawn Chartrand.  "Spatiotemporal variability of heatwave-driven streamflow in nival and glacial basins: Future insights from a century of observations".  European Geophysical Union.  April 15, 2024.

• Question: What can we learn about future heatwave-driven flooding by looking into the past century of observations of heatwaves and streamflow?

-2023-

(Invited talk)  Sam Anderson.  "Heatwaves and river flows: The changing role of extreme heat under climate change".  SFU School of Environmental Science Seminar.  November 14, 2023.

• Question: What role will climate change play in altering the streamflow response to heatwaves?

-2022-

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Using deep machine learning hydrological models to investigate how glaciers modify the streamflow response to heatwaves".  AGU Fall Meeting 2022.  December 2022. Poster presentation. 

• Question: When, where, and by how much do glaciers modify the streamflow response to heatwaves at regional scales?

• Links: [poster]

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Resilient rivers: Glacier controls of post-heatwave river flows in British Columbia".  Water and Environment Student Talks (West) 2022.  June 2022. Oral presentation. 

• Question: What role do glaciers play in how rivers respond to heatwaves, considering the context of climate change and the unprecedented North American heat wave of June 2021?

• Links: [talk]

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Using glaciers to interpret the decision-making of deep learning hydrological models".  Canadian Geophysical Union 2022.  June 2022.  Oral presentation.

• Question: How is glacier runoff represented within a deep learning regional hydrological model, and what does this tell us about the opportunities facing Canadian hydrologists?

• Links: [talk], [code]

(Invited talk)  Sam Anderson.  "Deglaciation in Alberta: Lessons from the climate crisis in Oil Country."  UBC Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences Colloquium.  January 13, 2022.

• Question: What have I learned about the forces that frame my research questions and how I communicate my results since studying deglaciation in Alberta?

• Links: [talk]

-2021-

(Invited talk)  Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  “Deep machine learning for regional streamflow prediction: What are models learning?”.  AGU Fall Meeting 2021.  December 2021.  Poster presentation.

• Question:  How can the decision making of deep machine learning streamflow models be interpreted, and how are data-driven models, interpretability, process-driven models related?

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  “Discovery and interpretation of hydrological process representation within convolutional long short-term memory neural networks”. AGU Fall Meeting 2021.  December 2021.  Poster presentation.

• Question:  What are the learned runoff-generating mechanisms within a streamflow-predicting CNN-LSTM model?  How is glacier melt represented within the internals of this model, and how can process representations be found more generally?

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  “Glaciers as tools to interpret deep machine learning regional hydrological models.”  Northwest Glaciologists’ Meeting 2021.  October 2021.  Oral presentation.

• Question:  How can glaciers be leveraged to understand how deep learning models learn to predict streamflow?  

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Emerging anomalies: Using data science to search for signals of climate change in Western Canadian streamflow"  Water and Environment Student Talks (WEST) 2021.  June 2021.  Oral presentation.

• Question: How have temperature anomalies been expressed as streamflow anomalies across British Columbia since 1950?

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Machine learning for modelling regional streamflow: What where, when, and why do machines learn?"  EOAS Poster Corral.  May 2021.  Oral presentation.

• Question: When CNN-LSTM models are used to predict regional streamflow, on what aspects of prior climate does the model focus on?  How does this vary in space and time?

-2020-

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Regional hydrological modelling with deep convolutional-recurrent neural networks: A case study in Western Canada."  AGU Fall Meeting 2020.  December 2020.  Oral presentation.

• • Question:  How well can a CNN-LSTM model architecture predict streamflow at multiple stream gauge stations simultaneously?  For each streamflow regime present, is the model learning to focus on physically relevant areas of the input?

  • Links: [talk]

-2018-

Sam Anderson and Valentina Radic.  "Detection and characterization of glacier melt signatures in Western Canadian streamflow."  AGU Fall Meeting 2018.  December 2018.  Oral presentation.

• • Question:  What spatio-temporal patterns differentiate glacier-fed rivers from non-glacier-fed rivers in Western Canada, and which communities will be impacted by the loss of glacier ice?