Projects per year
Personal profile
Biography
I have over 17 years’ experience in hydrological and hydrogeological research and consulting. After completing an applied maths degrees and environmental degree at Monash, I spent 5 years working at SKM Consulting within the catchment planning group, working on both surface water and groundwater projects within the Melbourne and regional Victorian offices. Following a year in Hanoi, Vitenam, with AusAID I commenced a PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2005. My PhD (completed 2009) presented pioneering work on catchment resilience and multiple steady states (http://hdl.handle.net/11343/35439) and I was subsequently awarded an Australian Research Council Post-doctoral Fellowship to continue this research at the University of Melbourne.
From 2010-2019, I was a research fellow/senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne, Department of Infrastructure Engineering. During this time I have attracted multiple Australian Research Council Linkage projects and industry research funding, including the hydrology component of the Victorian Government Water and Climate Initiative, and worked closely with state and federal government agencies.
From October 2019, I moved to Monash to take up a senior lecturer position.
Research interests
I focus on detecting long-term change in catchment hydrological processes and drivers early enough so that society can act. Central to this is understanding when and where catchments do and do not recovery from disturbances, such as droughts or land cover change. To achieve these insights, I generally use numerical models to frame the questions and statistical analysis of long-term observation data to answer the questions - an approach with provides insights and requires few assumptions.
All of my research is focused on social-outcomes and I strive to place my research within Pasteur's quadrant; that is, advancing both fundamental understanding and applied outcomes. To achieve this, I work closely with state and federal governments and engineering consultancies and in collaboration with them I have developed the following industry-adopted open-source packages:
- HydroSight is a highly flexible statistical package (with a graphical interface) for deriving quantitative insights value from groundwater monitoring data. HydroSight has been adopted by the Bureau of Meteorology and state government agencies and many consultants and has been downloaded >765 times from many countries.
- HydroMap is a powerful R package for kriging interpolation of sparse groundwater level observations - that is, groundwater potentiometry. HydroMap has been adopted by the Bureau of Meteorology for the National Water Accounts.
- AWAPer is an R package for the efficient extraction of daily catchment average precipitation, Tmin, Tmax, vapour pressure, solar radiation and estimation of areal potential evaporation anywhere within Australia.
- Catchment Resilience Model is hillslope Boussinesq semi-distributed hydrological model for quantitively understanding hydrological positive feedbacks, resilience and attractors.
Currently, I am developing time-series statistical approaches for understanding when and where rainfall runoff has not recovered from droughts. This project is heavily supported by the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP), and get some insights into this work see my presentation at the DELWP Science Day.
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
Education/Academic qualification
Catchment hydrology, PhD, University of Melbourne
Award Date: 1 Jul 2010
Catchment hydrology, Bachelor of Environmental Engineering (Honours, 1st Class), MONASH UNIVERSITY
Award Date: 1 Jul 2001
Aapplied mathematics, Bachelor of Science, MONASH UNIVERSITY
Award Date: 31 Dec 1997
External positions
Honourary senior research fellow, University of Melbourne
7 Oct 2019 → 7 Oct 2022
Research area keywords
- Hydrolological resilience
- groundwater hydrology
- Time series analysis
- Geostatistics
- Environmental management
- Environmental modelling
Network
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Observed streamflow generation changes: better understanding and modelling
Peel, M., Peterson, T., Chiew, F., Zhang, L. & James, R.
Monash University – Internal Department Contribution
14/05/20 → 13/05/23
Project: Research
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Explaining changes in rainfall-runoff relationships during and after Australia's Millennium Drought: a community perspective
Fowler, K., Peel, M., Saft, M., Peterson, T. J., Western, A., Band, L., Petheram, C., Dharmadi, S., Tan, K. S., Zhang, L., Lane, P., Kiem, A., Marshall, L., Griebel, A., Medlyn, B. E., Ryu, D., Bonotto, G., Wasko, C., Ukkola, A., Stephens, C., & 13 others , 6 Dec 2022, In: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. 26, 23, p. 6073-6120 48 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
Open Access3 Citations (Scopus) -
Hydrological shifts threaten water resources
Fowler, K., Peel, M., Saft, M., Nathan, R., Horne, A., Wilby, R., McCutcheon, C. & Peterson, T., Aug 2022, In: Water Resources Research. 58, 8, e2021WR031210.Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment / Debate › Research
Open Access3 Citations (Scopus) -
Identifying causal interactions between groundwater and streamflow using convergent cross-mapping
Bonotto, G., Peterson, T. J., Fowler, K. & Western, A. W., Aug 2022, In: Water Resources Research. 58, 8, 26 p., e2021WR030231.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
Open Access3 Citations (Scopus) -
Non-stationary influences of large-scale climate drivers on low flow extremes in Southeast Australia
Goswami, P., Peterson, T. J., Mondal, A. & Rüdiger, C., Jul 2022, In: Water Resources Research. 58, 7, 21 p., e2021WR031508.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
Open Access2 Citations (Scopus) -
Watersheds may not recover from drought
Peterson, T. J., Saft, M., Peel, M. C. & John, A., 14 May 2021, In: Science. 372, 6543, p. 745-749 6 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer-review
68 Citations (Scopus)
Prizes
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AGU 2019 Editors’ Citation for Excellence in Refereeing - Water Resources Research
Peterson, Tim (Recipient), 23 Apr 2020
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
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Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (Industry)
Peterson, Tim (Recipient), 1 Mar 2010
Prize: Competitive Fellowships
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Early Career Research Excellence Award
Peterson, Tim (Recipient), 3 Dec 2015
Prize: National/international honour
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Fellow of the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand
Peterson, Tim (Recipient), 1 Mar 2020
Prize: Election to learned society