Education

PhD, 2024: Civil Engineering, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.

MSc, 2018: Water Resources and Environmental Hydrology, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.

BSc/PEng, 2014: Civil Engineering, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.

Experience

2024-present: Postdoctoral Associate, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, CANADA.

2023-2024: Project Engineer, Department of Civil Engineering, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.

2019-2020: Project Engineer, Arcadis Chile, Santiago, Chile.

2015-2020: Research Project Engineer, Department of Civil Engineering, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.

Short Bio

Nicolás Vásquez is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, working with Dr. Martyn Clark. His research integrates process-based hydrological modeling, large-sample hydrology, and machine learning — including emulator-based calibration and differentiable modeling — to improve understanding and prediction of water cycle dynamics across gauged and ungauged regions of the Americas. His doctoral research at the Universidad de Chile examined how methodological decisions in climate model selection, bias correction, temporal stratification, and hydrological model calibration propagate through uncertainty cascades and shape hydroclimatic projections across 120 catchments spanning Chile’s full climatic diversity.

Publications

Journal Articles:

1. Kreibich, H., Sivapalan, M., AghaKouchak, A., Addor, N., Aksoy, H., Arheimer, B., et al. (including Vásquez, N.), “Panta Rhei: a decade of progress in research on change in hydrology and society”, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 70(7), 1210–1236 (2025).

2. Givovich, F., Mendoza, P.A., Vásquez, N., Murillo, O., Muñoz-Castro, E., and Ayala, Á., “Representing subgrid precipitation variability in snowpack and hydrological modeling: Is adding complexity worth it?”, Journal of Hydrology, 134038 (2025).

3. Lema, F., Mendoza, P.A., Vásquez, N., Mizukami, N., Zambrano-Bigiarini, M., and Vargas, X., “What does the Standardized Streamflow Index actually reflect? Insights and implications for hydrological drought analysis”, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 29(8), 1981–2002 (2025).

4. Vásquez, N., Mendoza, P.A., Lagos-Zúñiga, M.A., Scaff, L., Muñoz-Castro, E., and Vargas, X., “Robust spatial changes in climate classes: Insights from bias-corrected CMIP6 models across Chile”, Environmental Research Letters, 20(1), 014061 (2024).

5. Vásquez, N., Mendoza, P.A., Knoben, W.J.M., Arnal, L., Lagos-Zúñiga, M., Clark, M.P., and Vargas, X., “The key role of temporal stratification for GCM bias correction in climate impact assessments”, Earth’s Future, 12(8), e2023EF004242 (2024).

6. Gateño, F., Mendoza, P.A., Vásquez, N., et al., “Screening CMIP6 models for Chile based on past performance and code genealogy”, Climatic Change, 177, 87 (2024).

7. Cortés-Salazar, N., Vásquez, N., Mizukami, N., Mendoza, P.A., and Vargas, X., “To what extent does river routing matter in hydrological modeling?”, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 27, 3505–3524 (2023).

8. Muñoz-Castro, E., Mendoza, P.A., Vásquez, N., and Vargas, X., “Exploring parameter (dis)agreement due to calibration metric selection in conceptual rainfall–runoff models”, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 68(12), 1754–1768 (2023).

9. Murillo, O., Mendoza, P.A., Vásquez, N., Mizukami, N., and Ayala, Á., “Impacts of subgrid temperature distribution along elevation bands in snowpack modeling: Insights from a suite of Andean catchments”, Water Resources Research, 58(12), e2022WR032113 (2022).

In Press:

1. Thébault, C., Knoben, W.J.M., Addor, N., Newman, A.J., Spieler, D., Vásquez, N., Song, Y., Gründemann, G.J., Carney, S., Kumar, M., van Werkhoven, K., Shen, C., Wood, A.W., and Clark, M.P., “Comparing multi-model mosaic and multi-model combination methods to simulate streamflow across the contiguous USA”, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, in press.

Under Review:

1. Vásquez, N., Mendoza, P.A., Knoben, W., Clark, M., Stadnyk, T., and Mizukami, N., “Same streamflow, different water stories: the hidden impacts of streamflow-only calibration in distributed hydrological modeling”, EGUsphere [preprint], under review.

2. Coderre, P., Knoben, W., Thébault, C., Vásquez, N., Clark, M.P., and Pietroniro, A., “Technical note: on the need for appropriate benchmarks in hydrologic model evaluation”, Water Resources Research, under review.

Book Chapters:

1. Vásquez, N., Cepeda, J., Gómez, T., Mendoza, P.A., Lagos, M., Boisier, J.P., et al. (2021). Catchment-scale natural water balance in Chile. Water Resources of Chile (Springer), pp. 189–208. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56901-3_9.

2. Vásquez, N., Mendoza, P.A., & Vargas, X. (2021). Explorando la relación entre similitud hidrológica, climática y fisiográfica mediante clasificación de cuencas. Rutas Hidrológicas (Universidad de Chile Press), pp. 19–33.

3. Vicuña, S., Vargas, X., Boisier, J.P., Mendoza, P.A., Gómez, T., Vásquez, N., & Cepeda, J. (2020). Impacts of climate change on water resources in Chile. Water Resources of Chile (Springer). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56901-3_19.

Datasets:

1. Vásquez, N. & Mendoza, P.A. (2024). Statistically downscaled and bias-corrected CMIP6 models for Continental Chile under scenario SSP5-8.5. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/DATAVERSE.

Dr. Nicolás Vásquez

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Computational Hydrology