Leanne R. Lestak

• GIS and Remote Sensing Specialist at University of Colorado Boulder

Plain Language Summary In February 2017, extreme runoff into California's second‐largest reservoir, Lake Oroville, and cracks in the reservoir's spillways resulted in evacuations of thousands of people and major repair costs. We analyzed to what extent the atmospheric river storms that caused the extreme runoff were unusual in terms of precipitatio...

We used multiple sources of remotely sensed and ground based information to evaluate the spatio-temporal variability of snowpack accumulation, potential evapotranspiration (PET), and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) throughout the Southern Rocky Mountain ecoregion, USA. Relationships between these variables were used to establish basel...

The Barrow Area of northern Alaska is one of the most intensely researched locations in the Arctic and the Barrow Area Information Database (BAID, www.barrowmapped.org) tracks and facilitates a gamut of research, management, and educational activities in the area. BAID is a cyberinfrastructure (CI) that details much of the historic and extant resea...

Mitigating, or adapting to, the impacts of environmental change on coastal landscapes, from both social and engineering perspectives, requires accurate baseline data that must be related to geomorphic processes. However, the inherent social and environmental dynamics of the coastal zone set up a contentious situation for decision makers and researc...

Observed climate trends over the past 50 years indicate a reduction in snowpack water storage across the Western U.S. As the primary water source for the region, the loss in snowpack water storage presents significant challenges for managing water deliveries to meet agricultural, municipal, and hydropower demands. Improved snowpack information via...

This presentation describes our work to improve the understanding of the broad range of factors affecting the occurrence of flooding in Barrow, Alaska, with an emphasis on interactions among these factors in a series of extreme events that have affected the community over the past 50 years. We have applied a numerical weather prediction model and a...

The purpose of the research reported here is to help the community in Barrow, Alaska, clarify its vulnerability to extreme weather events, and devise better-informed policies for reducing that vulnerability and adapting to climate variability and change. We examine the worst disaster on record there - a storm that struck on 3 October 1963 - from di...

Along the north slope of Alaska, shorefast ice protects the coast up to 9 months of the year and negligible tides and waves minimally disturb the shore during the remaining summer months. Most of the coastline change, then, is thought to occur during summer and autumn storm conditions, where heightened sea levels and increased wave action accelerat...

The Beaufort-Chukchi cyclones of October 1963 and August 2000 produced the highest winds ever recorded in Barrow, Alaska. In both cases, winds of 25 m s21 were observed with gusts unofficially reported at 33 m s 21. The October 1963 storm caused significant flooding, contaminated drinking water, and interrupted power supplies. The August 2000 storm...

submitted 10/27/03 to: Arctic Coastal Dynamics, Report of an International Workshop, Ber. Polarforsch. Meeresforsch. A variety of empirical and modeling approaches are being taken to assess the history and risk of erosion and flooding along the Chukchi Sea coast near Barrow, Alaska. Part of a broad assessment of climate impacts for the North Slope...