Two works at EGU 2025
During the week of April 28th to May 2nd, 2025, I participated in the 2025 European Geosciences Union (EGU 2025) Conference, held in Vienna, Austria. This is the most important European conference in the field of Earth Sciences, held annually and attracting researchers from all over the world.
On this occasion, I presented a poster and participated as a co-author in an oral presentation:
- How well do gridded products represent soil moisture signatures in natural ecosystems during precipitation events?. This works presents the first South American evaluation of various gridded soil moisture products, which were compared with in situ measurements available in four Chilean watersheds since 2021. The poster is available at this link. This collaboration was only possible thanks to funding provided by ANID through the Fondecyt Regular project 1212071, which allowed the colaboration with Dr. Mauricio Galleguillos (U. Adolfo Ibañez) and Daniel Nuñez, a student from the Master Programme in Territorial Magement of Natural Resources in U. de Chile.

Dr. Zambrano-Bigiarini at EGU 2025
- Development of a Flood Early Warning System for Critical Catchments in Southern Chile. In this work, Héctor Garcés, a thesis student of the Civil Engineering degree at Universidad de La Frontera, presented to the international community the development of a prototype flood early warning system, applied to critical catchments in the Araucanía region. This prototype was developed by the student as part of his undergraduate thesis and during a professional internship at the General Water Directorate of the Araucanía Region. It should be noted that this work was an oral presentation, which is an important exception at this very prestigious international event. Normally, only academics, doctoral students, postdocs, and master’s thesis students present at this conference. This reflects the high quality of the work being conducted by thesis student Héctor Garcés. This work also received ANID funding through the Chile-China international collaboration project NSFC 190018 and the Fondecyt Regular project 1212071.

Héctor Garcés F. at EGU 2025

Héctor Garcés F. at EGU 2025
Finally, during this conference I was able to discuss possibilities of collaboration with Dr. Alonso Pizarro from the Univeridad Diego Portales, and to talk about a joint article with Dr. Oscar Baez-Villanueva from Ghent University (Belgium), and with Dr. Yangbo Chen from Sun Yat-sen University (China, co-PI of the international collaboration project NSFC190018), among others.

Dr. Zambrano-Bigiarini, Dr. Pizarro and an Italian colleague at EGU 2025

Héctor Garcés F., a Chilean student in Europe, Dr. Zambrano-Bigiarini, Dr. Pizarro at EGU 2025
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of La Frontera. I hold a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of Trento (Italy) and completed postdoctoral training at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. I have more than 20 years of experience in water resources research and have previously served as an Associate Researcher at the Center for Climate and Resilience Research (CR)2 and as a member of the Earth Sciences Assessment Group of the Chilean National Research and Development Agency (ANID).
My research lies at the interface of hydrology, data science, and environmental sciences, with a particular focus on the use of gridded datasets and open-source tools to investigate droughts, extreme events, and water-related impacts of global change.
I work across spatial and temporal scales to improve the understanding of catchment-scale hydrological processes and to translate this knowledge into operational modelling, forecasting, and early-warning systems that support robust environmental decision-making.
Please reach out to collaborate 😃