Coastal resilience: What keeps a coastal wetland resilient?
I study how water, sediment, vegetation, sea-level rise, subsidence, and waves interact to determine whether deltas and wetlands persist or cross critical thresholds.
Ali Reza
Payandeh
I study coasts as connected Earth systems, bringing together satellite observations, numerical models, and field measurements to understand the processes that shape them and how they respond to a changing climate.
Earth System Scientist · Physical Oceanographer
Explore my research
Observation-driven prediction: Can we predict a coast we cannot instrument?
I combine optical, lidar, and radar observations with process-based models to build transferable approaches for coastal systems where conventional measurements are sparse.
Land-ocean exchange: What moves across the land-ocean interface?
I investigate the pathways and timescales that move water and sediment across estuaries and wetlands, with emerging work extending this framework to coastal carbon transport.
Selected work
Mississippi River Delta model animation.NASA/JPL-Caltech ↗
Mississippi River Delta:
Integrating airborne and satellite observations with hydrodynamic, sediment, and morphodynamic models to understand the processes that build and lose coastal land. This work links water-level change, sediment transport, vegetation, and landscape evolution to evaluate how river deltas respond to subsidence, storms, and sea-level rise.
Simulated salinity dynamics in Langebaan Lagoon and Saldanha Bay.Payandeh et al., 2026 ↗
Langebaan Lagoon, South Africa:
Using ICESat-2, Sentinel-2, SWOT, global forcing, and a hydrodynamic model to build and test a coastal prediction framework without local in-situ measurements. Satellite-derived bathymetry and water-surface elevation provide independent constraints on model geometry and performance, demonstrating a transferable approach for data-scarce estuaries and lagoons.
Examples of submesoscale eddies identified from high-frequency radar surface currents.Payandeh et al., 2023 ↗
Southern California Bight:
Using a decade of high-frequency radar observations to examine submesoscale eddies, their variability, and their connection to larger-scale ocean conditions.
Hydrodynamic simulation of Buenaventura Bay.Payandeh · ongoing work ↗
Buenaventura, Colombia:
Developing an observation-driven model of a tropical mangrove estuary as a foundation for studying material transport from rivers and wetlands to the coastal ocean.
Fieldwork
Field measurements keep my models tied to the systems they are meant to represent. My work has included drifter and eddy studies in the Santa Barbara Channel, sediment and water sampling near Grand Isle, and measurements of waves, water level, currents, and turbidity across the Mississippi River Delta Bight and Barataria Bay.
Teaching & mentoring
Courses Taught
OCS 4410: Ecosystem Modeling and Analysis
Delivered substitute lectures connecting equations, code, model development, and the analysis of environmental data.
- Role
- Teaching assistant
- Course level
- Upper-level undergraduate
- Teaching period
- 2017–2021
- Enrollment
- Approximately 30 students
OCS 7029: Case Studies in Coastal Ecosystem Modeling
Delivered substitute lectures and supported computational work with coastal ecosystem models.
- Role
- Teaching assistant
- Course level
- Graduate
- Teaching period
- 2017–2021
- Enrollment
- Approximately 20 students
Workshops
NASA Delta-X Applications Workshop (2024)
Led two hands-on sessions within a two-day, eight-session program for more than 100 participants. Participants built models and compared simulations directly with remote-sensing observations.
Hands-on sessions
- Hydrodynamic Modeling of Deltas Using Delft3D
- The Fate of Deltas: Delft3D Morphodynamic Modeling
Teaching Computation in the Sciences Using MATLAB
Taught focused computational sessions for scientists working with ocean and coastal data.
Sessions
- Tidal Analysis and Prediction
- Computation for Oceanography and Coastal Science
Selected publications
Google ScholarMulti-Sensor Airborne Remote Sensing for Calibrating Hydrodynamic and Sediment Transport Models in Coastal Louisiana Wetlands
Delta-X: An airborne remote sensing framework to calibrate hydrodynamic and ecogeomorphic processes responsible for land building in coastal deltas
A fully satellite-driven workflow for hydrodynamic modeling in data-scarce coastal systems
The Occurrence, Variability, and Potential Drivers of Submesoscale Eddies in the Southern California Bight
Tidal change in response to the relative sea level rise and marsh accretion in a tidally choked estuary
Suspended sediment dynamics in a deltaic estuary controlled by subtidal motion and offshore river plumes
Wave dynamics near Barataria Bay tidal inlets during spring-summer time
Subtidal Water Level and Current Variability in a Bar-Built Estuary During Cold Front Season: Barataria Bay, Gulf of Mexico
Numerical modeling of pollutant load accumulation in the Musa Estuary, Persian Gulf
Selected talks & presentations
Remote Sensing-Based Hydrodynamic Modeling in Data-Scarce Regions
Predicting Land Loss in Coastal Louisiana: A Coupled Hydrodynamic and Morphology Model Integrating Remote Sensing Data
A Decadal Analysis of Submesoscale Eddies in the Southern California Bight Through High-Frequency Radar Observations
Submesoscale Eddies in the Southern California Bight Derived from a Decade of High Frequency Radar Observations
Low Frequency Sea Level Variability in a Deltaic Mississippi River Estuary during Cold Front Season
Science beyond the lab
Clear science should travel:
I care about communicating science outside a specialty, from public conversations about ocean and climate science to my work with Zharfa, a Persian-language podcast and media project.
Zharfa Podcast · Persian
Visit Zharfa on YouTube Episode 9: Human extinction, climate change, and sea-level rise.