PhD Candidate in Environmental Systems (Hydrology & Water Resources) at the
University of California, Merced · Harmon Lab
Managed Aquifer Recharge · Applied Geophysics · Groundwater Sustainability
Hey, thanks for stopping by! I'm Humberto — a PhD candidate at UC Merced working at the intersection of hydrology, applied geophysics, and agricultural water management.
This site is a running record of my research and work. If you want to connect or catch a typo, drop me a message.
I'm a PhD candidate in the Environmental Systems Graduate Group at UC Merced, specializing in hydrology and water resources engineering. I expect to defend in 2026. Before my PhD I completed my M.S. (2024) and B.S. in Environmental Engineering (2020) — both at UC Merced, where I graduated with high honors and won the outstanding student award and best capstone project in Environmental Engineering.
My research is rooted in a simple belief: the science we produce should reach the people who need it. Outside the lab I serve on the Board of Directors of the SocioEnvironmental and Education Network (SEEN), a nonprofit where I help coordinate workshops and educational programs on scientific topics for K–12 students from disadvantaged communities. Since 2021 we've secured approximately $1.5 million in funding for educational and community programs.
I'm fluent in English and Spanish, which matters a lot for the community-engaged and extension work I do across the San Joaquin Valley.
Also, I love pugs. That's Dookie up there.
My dissertation addresses a core barrier to on-farm groundwater recharge: the lack of rapid, cost-effective methods to determine land suitability for Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR). Working at UC Merced's experimental smart farm, I developed and validated a farm-scale characterization workflow that pairs a towed transient electromagnetic (tTEM) geophysical survey with direct soil sampling to produce a continuous 3D subsurface suitability model.
A key finding was identifying a shallow perched aquifer — a storage target largely overlooked in San Joaquin Valley MAR literature. Building on the geophysical model, I constructed two recharge basins with contrasting suitability to validate the interpretation, quantify recharge contributions, and develop engineering solutions to bypass restrictive clay layers. This concept, micro-scale MAR (μMAR), has direct implications for expanding distributed recharge capacity across overdrafted subbasins.
Some web apps I helped develop for Multibenefit Land Repurposing suitability assessment across California's San Joaquin Valley.
An interactive geospatial toolkit for exploring Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program (MLRP) suitability in the Merced subbasin.
A few images from the field and beyond.
Taken on Nikon ZF 26mm lense