Marcelo Somos-Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Marcelo Somos-Valenzuela is an Assistant Professor in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Baylor University, where he directs the Mountain and Water Resources Lab (Lab-MoRH). A Fulbright Scholar from Chile, he holds a Ph.D. and M.S.E. in Water Resources from the University of Texas at Austin.

His research focuses on understanding how climate change is transforming mountain water systems, from shrinking glaciers and emerging lakes to shifting streamflow regimes and cascading natural hazards. At Baylor, he is building a research group centered on high-resolution hydrological modeling, AI applied to hydrology, water-isotope tracing, and critical-zone hydrology in mountain environments, with a particular focus on the Andes and the Himalayas. He is interested in quantifying uncertainty in hydrological predictions, identifying hydrological climate-change refugia, improving early warning systems for floods and droughts, and working with communities to translate science into actionable adaptation strategies.

A core thread in his work is connecting computational modeling with field observation. He brings extensive experience deploying instruments and collecting data on glaciers, glacial lakes, and headwater catchments across the Nepal Himalayas, the Cordillera Blanca in Peru, and Chilean Patagonia, often in close collaboration with local communities and government agencies. His earlier contributions to continental-scale streamflow simulation in the United States helped shape the operational forecasting framework used by the National Weather Service.

Before joining Baylor in 2025, Dr. Somos-Valenzuela served as an Associate Professor at the Universidad de La Frontera in Chile and held research positions at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.

His work has been supported by the National Geographic Society, NASA, the National Science Foundation, Microsoft Research, UNDP, USAID, and Chile's national science agencies, among others. He has advised numerous graduate students and is a founding member of the Chilean Cryosphere Society.

Course Offerings: Introduction to Hydrology, Hydrogeology, Water Management

Research Projects: 

NatGeo: Early Warning and Risk Communication System for Glacier Floods in Patagonia

ANID-Chile: Modeling Mountain streamflow and hydroclimate-elevation feedbacks in the Andean Araucania of Chile. 

Recent Highlights (awards, honors, interviews, press releases, etc.):

Selected Publications (books, journal articles, op-eds, etc.):

Irarrazaval, I., Somos−Valenzuela, M., Dussaillant, I., Lizama, E., Morales, B., Egli, P. E., & Reid, B. (2026). Shifts in glacier dynamics during land-to-lake terminus transition in western Patagonia by Inigo Irarrazaval and others. Journal of Glaciology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597−023−02828−2

Lizama, E., Somos-Valenzuela, M., Rivera, D., Lillo, M., Morales, B., Baraër, M., & Fernández, A. (2025). Role of mountain glaciers in the hydrological dynamics of headwater basins in the Wet Andes. Journal of Hydrology, 649(November 2024), 132413. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.132413

Fernández, A., Manquehual-Cheuque, F., & Somos-Valenzuela, M. (2024). Impact of Solar Radiation Management on Andean glacier-wide surface mass balance. Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 7(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-024-00807-x

Somos-Valenzuela, M. A., Oyarzun-Ulloa, J. E., Fustos-Toribio, I. J., Garrido-Urzua, N., & Chen, N. (2020). The mudflow disaster at Villa Santa Lucía in Chilean Patagonia: Understandings and insights derived from numerical simulation and postevent field surveys. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 20(8), 2319–2333. https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2319-2020