News Archives

UNM Ph.D. student leads development of open‑access tracer data platform

August 29, 2025

The University of New Mexico’s EcoHydrology and HydroSystems Lab, led by Ricardo González‑Pinzón, professor in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, has launched the portal Tracer Injection Experiments in RiveRs And Streams, TIERRAS.

This project is led by Ph.D. student Lina Rodríguez and seeks to compile data from tracer‑injection experiments in streams and rivers across the globe. TIERRAS is building an extensive, curated database to help identify patterns in conservative solute transport and develop adaptable models using physics-informed neural networks. The platform is openly available and allows the community to share and use conservative tracer experiment data to improve the interpretation of local results and the exploration of universal patterns.

The development of TIERRAS grew from a collaboration between the University of New Mexico, Washington State University, New Mexico State University, and the University of Illinois Urbana‑Champaign. This NSF-funded project aims to aggregate tracer‑experiment results from around the world, enable researchers to download standardized datasets, and encourage collaboration in hydrology and water resources engineering.

Rodriguez’s work extends beyond building the TIERRAS database. She has been part of a rapid response team that collected unprecedented data following the 2022 Hermit’s Peak‑Calf Canyon gigafire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history as a state. The team studied how the fire affected hydrologic and water‑quality processes and monitored the generation and downstream propagation of post‑fire aquatic disturbances. Rodriguez’s efforts curating big data, building a collaborative open-access platform, participating in field experiments, and working on innovative modeling exemplify the hands‑on, interdisciplinary training offered by our graduate programs in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering.