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Matthew McCabe

Professor of Remote Sensing and Water Security, Director of Climate and Livability Initiative

Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division 
Center membership :
Climate and Livability Initiative Water Desalination and Reuse

matthew.mccabe@kaust.edu.sa
Hydrology and Land Observation Group


Affiliations

Education Profile

  • Post-doctoral Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2006
  • Post-doctoral Fellow, Princeton University, 2003
  • Ph.D., University of Newcastle, Australia, 2003
  • B.E., University of Newcastle, Australia, 1998

Research Interests

Prof. McCabe’s research focuses on issues related to water and food security, climate change impacts, precision agriculture, water resources monitoring and modeling, and the novel use of technologies for enhanced Earth system observation. The research undertaken in his group combines models and observations to answer questions on the distribution, variability and exchanges of water at local, regional and global scales, as well as the interactions with vegetation. CubeSats, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and in-situ monitoring techniques are all employed to monitor terrestrial processes, while a range of modeling and statistical approaches are used to understand and predict system behavior. Improved description and understanding of the water-food nexus is a key objective of his research.

Selected Publications

  • McCabe MF*, Rodell M, Alsdorf DE, Miralles DG, Uijlenhoet R, Wagner W, Lucieer A, Houborg R, Verhoest NEC, Franz TE, Shi J, Gao H and Wood EF (2017) “The future of Earth observation in hydrology”, Hydrology and Earth Systems Sciences 21, 3879-3914, doi:10.5194/hess-21-3879-2017
  • Houborg R and McCabe MF (2016) “Adapting a regularised canopy reflectance model (REGFLEC) for the retrieval challenges of dryland agricultural systems”, Remote Sensing of Environment, 186: 105-120, doi:10.1016/j.rse.2016.08.017
  • McCabe MF*, Ershadi A, Jimenez C, Miralles DG, Michel D and Wood EF, (2016) “The GEWEX LandFlux project: Evaluation of model evaporation using tower-based and globally gridded forcing data” Geoscientific Model Development, doi:10.5194/gmd-9-283-2016
  • Houborg R and McCabe MF (2016) “High-resolution NDVI from Planet’s constellation of earth observing nano-satellites: a new data source for precision agriculture”, Remote Sensing, 8(9), 768; doi:10.3390/rs8090768
  • El Kenaway AM and McCabe MF (2016) "A multi-decadal assessment of the performance of gauge- and model-based rainfall products over Saudi Arabia: Climatology, anomalies and trends." International Journal of Climatology, 36: 656–674. doi:10.1002/joc.4374