Yoga Korgaonkar

Interests

No activities entered.

Courses

No activities entered.

Scholarly Contributions

Journals/Publications

• Su, X., Dai, Q., Yao, C., Gupta, N., Korgaonkar, Y., Milczarek, M., Tong, D., & Xu, T. (2025). Stormwater capture as a Pathway to enhance groundwater recharge: A potential assessment in arid to semi-Arid urban landscapes. City and Environment Interactions, 26. doi:10.1016/j.cacint.2025.100190
  More info

  In semi-arid to arid regions, urban stormwater management practices (SMPs) can be used to capture runoff and enhance local groundwater recharge. This study develops a novel, transferable, easy-to-implement method that utilizes open public records and LiDAR data to quantify stormwater runoff captured by SMPs. The novel approach is demonstrated using the Phoenix Active Management Area (Phoenix AMA), a large metropolitan region in semi-arid to arid central Arizona. We employ a spatially distributed approach to analyse stormwater runoff capture under a portfolio of historical and future (1992–2058) climate and urbanization scenarios, with a focus on drywells and retention/detention ponds. It was found that existing drywell installations captured approximately 7.2 % of the total runoff in the Phoenix AMA during 2010–2020, or an average annual volume of 19,300 acre-ft (2.38 × 107m3). Retention/detention ponds are estimated to capture 82,900 acre-ft (1.02 × 108m3) annually during 2010–2019, or 28.4 % of the total runoff. Projections suggest that over 45,000 acre-ft (5.55 × 107m3) of more runoff could be captured per year under future climate and urbanization scenarios by 2058, with most of the increase attributed to urbanization. The results highlight the significant role of SMPs in mitigating stormwater runoff and improving local groundwater recharge. Our approach is transferable to other regions sharing the need for stormwater capture yet lacking detailed infrastructure data.
• Goodrich, D. C., Meixner, T., Guertin, D. P., & Korgaonkar, Y. . (2021). Hydrological Modeling of Green Infrastructure to Quantify Its Effect on Flood Mitigation and Water Availability in the High School Watershed in Tucson, AZ. International Journal of Geo-Information. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10070443
• Korgaonkar, Y. S., Meles, M. B., Guertin, D. P., Goodrich, D. C., & Unkrich, C. (2020). Global sensitivity analysis of KINEROS2 hydrologic model parameters representing green infrastructure using the STAR-VARS framework. Environmental Modelling & Software, 132. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104814
• Burns, I. S., Kepner, W., Unkrich, C., Goodrich, D. D., Guertin, D. P., & Korgaonkar, Y. S. (2018). Modeling Urban Hydrology and Green Infrastructure using the AGWA Urban Tool and the KINEROS2 Model. Frontiers of Built Environment, 4, 58. doi:10.3389/fbuil.2018.00058
• Korgaonkar, Y., Biederman, J. A., Brooks, P. D., Condon, K., Harpold, A. A., Merino, M., Nan, T., Ross, M. A., & Sloat, L. L. (2014). Changes in snow accumulation and ablation following the Las Conchas Forest Fire, New Mexico, USA. Ecohydrology, 7(2), 440-452. doi:10.1002/eco.1363
  More info

  Seasonally, snow-covered forests are a critical source of water in the Western United States and are subject to major disturbances, including fire, harvest, disease and insect-caused mortality, that have relatively unknown effects on water availability. In this study, we investigated changes in winter season snow accumulation and ablation in a forest following the Las Conchas fire in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. We investigated two competing sets of processes that should determine the peak annual snowpack prior to snowmelt: (1) reduced interception by forest canopy results in greater new snow accumulation and (2) increased winter season ablation of the snowpack results in reduced peak snowpack volumes. These processes were evaluated with approximately 800 spatially distributed manual observations of new snow, 1500 manual observations of peak snowpack, and light detection and ranging-derived snow depth, vegetation and terrain datasets collected prior to the fire. A single snowfall event yielded significantly larger snow depths in the post-burn area versus the unburned area (p< 0.001), with 25% to 45% interception in the unburned area and near zero in the post-burn area. Conversely, the peak snowpack depths were significantly larger in the unburned area compared with the post-burn area (mean of 55 and 47 cm, respectively), despite nearly identical peak snowpacks prior to the fire (72 and 72 cm, respectively). The lack of strong vegetation controls led to less variability at peak snowpack in the post-burn area and a shift towards topographically controlled variability, caused by differences in elevation and aspect, occurring at larger spatial scales. The unburned area had roughly 10% more water available for melt than the post-burn area, with winter season ablation reducing snowpacks by nearly 50% prior to melt in the post-burn area. The relative importance of shortwave radiation to the snowpack energy balance and sublimation suggests that the 10% reductions in peak snow water storage found in these north-facing areas could be a conservative estimate for winter season ablation following fire. Further work is necessary to assess the role that topography plays in altering water partitioning following forest disturbance and the potential implications for ecological health and downstream water resources. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Supporting information may be found in the online version of this article.

Proceedings Publications

• Burns, I. S., Kepner, W. G., Unkrich, C., Goodrich, D. C., Guertin, D. P., & Korgaonkar, Y. S. (2019, Summer). Modeling urban hydrology and green infrastructure using the AGWA Urban Tool and the KINEROS2 model. In : Proceedings of the Sixth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds (James S. Latimer, Carl C. Trettin, David Bosch, and Charles Lane, Editors), U.S. Forest Service e-General Technical Report SRS-243, 78-84.
• Kautz, M., Patel, J., Wei, H., Olimpio, B., Heilman, P., Hernandez, M., Korgaonkar, Y. S., Levick, L., Unkrich, C., Burns, I. S., Guertin, D. P., & Goodrich, D. C. (2019, Summer). The KINEROS2-AGWA Suite of Modeling Tools. In Proceedings of the 2019 Federal Interagency Sedimentation and Hydrologic Modeling Conference.
• Levick, L., Kepner, W. G., Unkrich, C., Olimpio, B., Patel, J., Korgaonkar, Y. S., Burns, I. S., Goodrich, D. C., & Guertin, D. P. (2019, Summer). Application of the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment Tool (AGWA). In Proceedings of the Sixth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds (James S. Latimer, Carl C. Trettin, David Bosch, and Charles Lane, Editors), U.S. Forest Service e-General Technical Report SRS-243, 176-184.
• Unkrich, C., Patel, J., Olimpio, B., Korgaonkar, Y. S., Guertin, D. P., Goodrich, D. C., & Burns, I. S. (2019, Summer). Demonstration of the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA) Tool (Extended Abstract). In Proceedings of the 2019 Federal Interagency Sedimentation and Hydrologic Modeling Conference.
• Guertin, D. P., Goodrich, D. C., Burns, I. S., Korgaonkar, Y., Barlow, J., Sheppard, B. S., Unkrich, C. L., & Kepner, W. G. (2015). Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment Tool (AGWA). In Watershed Management 2015, 120-130.
  More info

  The Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment tool (AGWA, see: www.tucson.ars.ag.gov/agwaor http://www.epa.gov/esd/land-sci/agwa/) is a GIS interface jointly developed by the USDA Agricultural Research Service, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the University of Arizona, and the University of Wyoming to automate the parameterization and execution of a suite of hydrologic and erosion models (RHEM, KINEROS2 and SWAT). Through an intuitive interface the user selects an outlet from which AGWA delineates anddiscretizes the watershed using a Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The watershed modelelements are then intersected with terrain, soils, and land cover data layers to derive the requisitemodel input parameters. The chosen model is then run, and the results are imported backinto AGWA for graphical display. AGWA can difference results from multiple simulations to examine relative change over a variety of input scenarios (e.g. climate/storm change, land cover change, implementation of BMPs, present conditions and alternative futures).This allows managers to identify potential problem areas where additional monitoring can be undertaken or mitigation activities can be focused. Application examples of AGWA will be presented including post-fire assessment, implementation of rangeland BMPs, green infrastructure, and future change analysis. Versions of AGWA are available for ESRI ArcView 3.x and ArcGIS 9.x and 10.x.
• Guertin, D. P., Korgaonkar, Y., Burns, I. S., Barlow, J., Goodrich, D. C., Unkrich, C. L., & Kepner, W. G. (2015). Evaluation of Green Infrastructure Designs Using the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment Tool. In Watershed Management 2015, 229-239.

Poster Presentations

• Burns, I. S., Unkrich, C. C., Guertin, D. P., Korgaonkar, Y. ., & Goodrich, D. C. (2022, Fall). The AGWA-Urban Tool: A Linked GIS and Watershed Modeling Tool to Assess the Hydrologic Impacts of Development from Lot to Watershed Scales. AGU Fall Conference. Chicago, IL: AGU.
• Korgaonkar, Y. ., Guertin, D. P., Gupta, N., & Meixner, T. (2022, Fall). Urban Semi-arid Catchments Hydrologic and Biogeochemical Influences of Stream Substrate and Green Stormwater Infrastructure. AGU Fall Conference. Chicago, IL: AGU.