New scientific officer at the ICWRGC

Ms. Renee van Dongen joined the ICWRGC team as a scientific officer and project coordinator of the URSACHEN project on November 1^st.. URSACHEN is a joint project of the Federal Institute of Hydrology and the ICWRGC.

Renee received both her Bachelor and Master degree from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. She specialized in the fields of soil science, geomorphology and hydrology. Renee’s Master thesis focuses on gully erosion in the Awach-Kano region in Kenya. Within the scope of her thesis, she worked closely together with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

After obtaining her Master degree, Renee started her doctoral studies at the German Research Institute for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam, Germany. Her PhD-project was part of a German-Chilean research initiative called “EarthShape”, an interdisciplinary project focusing on Earth Surface Shaping by Biota. In her PhD, Renee investigated the way in which vegetation and soils modulate catchment hydrology, and the effects on long-term river incision. The study areas were located on a climatic gradient in Chile.

Renee will be part of the ICWRGC team for the next three years. The URSACHEN project will focus on the spatial and temporal uncertainties in the monitoring of water quality and sediment transport parameters. Renee’s tasks include project coordination, applying the project results to the GEMStat database and developing a tool for the uncertainty calculation of GEMStat data.