Lejo Flores, Ph.D.

@hydrolejo.bsky.social

3370 Followers 1313 Following

Professor of Hydrology at Boise State. Focused on the intersection of climate, critical zone, and computing.

A mixed forest-shrubland mountain ecosystem in the foreground far above a cloudy inversion in the background
A 1/4 cup serving of Parmesan cheese is 110 calories and contains 7/2/10 grams of fat/carbs/protein
A Table of the 2022 United States Senate election in Idaho Party Candidate Votes % Republican Mike Crapo (incumbent) 358,539 60.6% Democratic David Roth 169,808 28.7% Independent Scott Cleveland 49,917 8.4% Constitution Ray Writz 8,500 1.4% Libertarian Idaho Sierra Law 4,126 0.7% Total votes 590,890 100.00%
Three NYT connections squares reading “inanimate,” “carbon,” and “rod.” This references a couple of Simpsons episodes
Mammatus clouds in the sky over Albertsons stadium with a large, blue scoreboard in the foreground
An Apple messages screen in which a random spam text asks “How about we go to yoga in the evening?” I reply (but do not send) “How about we do like 4 10 minute rounds of judo randori instead?”
An AI-generated response to the query “is it 2025?” done on May 29, 2025 at 6:40pm MT. The response reads “No, it is not 2025. The current year is 2024. According to a calendar. It is May 28, 2024”
A bumper sticker with the acronym LGBT but the letters correspond to liberty, guns, beer, and Trump with pictographs of the Statue of Liberty, an AKM, a mug of beer, and Donald Trump’s face
Mt. Rainier shrouded in clouds the morning of Monday, May 19 2025
An F-14B tomcat from VF-103 bearing a Jolly Roger’s tail flash
A scene from "The Hunt for Red October" where Dr. Jeffrey Pelt asks Ambassador Andrei Lysenko, "Andrei, you've lost another submarine?"
Lejo and Steve Loheide in front of Camp Randall Stadium
Students and Lejo at Tacos El Rey in Caldwell, Idaho
USGS Physical Scientist Hannah Richardson describes how to carry out groundwater depth measurements via USGS protocols
A man in a yellow jacket in front of a sign reading Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary sciences. The subtitle reads “Be moved by the space around you. Be motivated. Be driven. Define your space. Chase your dream. Chart your future “
Stock market futures indicating the Dow Jones Industrial average down 1,017.00 or 2.39%, the S&P 500 down 198.00 or 3.47%, and the NASDAQ down 869.00 or 4.40%
A snow covered shrubland and partly cloudy skies as seen from a car dashboard
People standing and sitting around an open snow pit in an open clearing on a ridge top. Partly cloudy skies in the background
An ad poster for General Atomics showing a stealth drone flying with text “the only choice to build the right CCA” appearing at the top
Boise State versus Oregon State game at Albertsons Stadium. Looking toward the southeast at the blue turf field
A slide containing a Venn diagram with three intersecting circles labelled Obligatory, Strategic, and Enriching. Populating the diagram are service roles shown in red (concluded) and green (ongoing) and where they fall. Bullets define obligatory service as service you must do, strategic service as service that advances longer-term goals, and enriching service as service that provides meaning beyond metrics. A list of key things to remember are: (1) you should be able to answer whether you have time for a particular service role and whether it's right, right now, (2) saying "no" now is not saying "no" forever, and (3) you should practice authentically saying "no"
Fig. 11. Seasonal ERT inversion results over two months showing the resistivity variation as a result of the lateral water flow movement from the adjacent water-filled surface Phyllis canal.
The Henry's Fork River at sunrise. Picture available under the Creative Commons license from https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/1272891993
Aurora borealis with some green and indigo as seen from Boise, ID
Snow covered mountains in the background with sagebrush in the foreground and a dirt road in the front center
An article entitled "A plant that’s everywhere is fueling a growing risk of wildfire disaster" depicts a wildland firefighter in front of a fire burning in a mixed grassland-forest system. The article can be found at: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/climate/wildfire-grass-risk-west-us/index.html
An email reading, in part, Dear Alejandro, N. Flores, We are delighted to share that your work, published in Earth's Future on behalf of American Geophysical Union, has received enough downloads to rank within the top 10% of papers published*: Global-Scale Shifts in Rooting Depths Due To Anthropocene Land Cover Changes Pose Unexamined Consequences for Critical Zone Functioning This achievement is a testament to the recognition and celebration of your work within the community, congratulations!
New York Times spelling bee game indicating “edaphic” is not in the word list.
Subsurface critical zone structures of three sites in the United States (from top to bottom: Gordon Gulch, Colorado; Johnston Draw, Idaho; and Pond Branch, Maryland): (a) seismic P-wave velocity images and (b) the associated conceptual models. The seismic velocity data for Gordon Gulch and Pond Branch are from St Clair et al. (2015), and the data for Johnston Draw are from Nielson et al. (2021). Different shapes of the weathered bedrock and the associated storage capacity change were attributed to different horizontal compressive tectonic stresses relative to the vertical gravitational stresses (Riebe et al., 2017; St Clair et al., 2015).
Comparison of WY2018 and WY2019 SWE in the top two rows and SD in the bottom two rows from ASO and Noah-MP. The labels (08, 10, 55, and PRISM) refer to the precipitation forcing used for Noah-MP.
Conceptual diagram illustrating key microphysical process controls on orographic precipitation as a parcel moves across a mountain barrier. The lifting condensation level (LCL), temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), hydrometeor velocity (V), and advection distance (D) are depicted. Secondary controls on slope scale snow deposition/redeposition are also shown. Gray contours show hypothetical wind streamlines.
Downtown San Francisco in the foreground seen from the window of an airplane
A screencap of an ad for a “dad’s rights” law firm, taking about how “millions of dads will wish they could spend more time with their kids this (Thanksgiving) weekend.” The implication being their inability to is the fault of an estranged spouse or parter.
ERW annual mean PRISM mean precipitation compared to the three closest SNOTEL sites, namely Schofield (737; north of ERW), Upper Taylor (1141; east of ERW), and Butte (381; within ERW). The pre- or post-2010 mean differences between the Butte and PRISM east mean are plotted with standard errors.
ERW basin mean precipitation for water years between 1990 and 2020 from three different estimates. WRF, PRISM, and the posterior probability distribution from the Bayesian MCMC inference method are shown. The widths of the PRISM and WRF bars are the standard error for the respective mean.
The Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) SWE maps over the ERW employed in this study. (c) Basin-averaged elevation versus the average SWE for ASO and calibrated SNOW-17 at ASO flight dates. (d) Time series of calibrated SNOW-17 by elevation band (n=100).
The top row shows the spatial averages of 1987–2011 annual precipitation for the WRF, PRISM, Newman, and Livneh datasets for the entirety of the inner WRF model domain at each respective data resolution. Topography at WRF and the coarsest product resolution are also shown (far left column; second and third rows). The difference and percent difference between each product and WRF are shown in the second and third rows.
Error characteristics of 24 SNOTEL sites compared against the corresponding WRF grid cells for 1987–2020. (a) The 1-week rolling mean time series of average SNOTEL (orange) precipitation compared against WRF (blue). (b) Annual precipitation percent error (SNOTEL as reference) for each site. (c) Average timing of water delivery (%) as a function of day of water year for WRF (blue) and SNOTEL (orange). (d) Correlations between 1-week accumulated precipitation in WRF and SNOTEL for the warm season (bottom) and cool season (top). (e) Average precipitation percent errors by season.
WRF model domains and East River watershed (ERW), with the elevation (left) and satellite imagery (right) displayed. The outer nest (D01) is 3 km dy/dx, and the inner domain (D02) is 1 km dy/dx. Purple triangles show the locations of the SNOTEL sites examined in this study, and the orange circle shows the USGS stream gauge at the outlet of the ERW. Major mountain ranges are also labeled.
A number sticker that reads “don’t Boulder my Golden”
As seen from an airplane window, a recent snow covers forest canopy in the Yellowstone region.