Meet the Team
Michael L. Deas, Ph.D., P.E.
Dr. Deas has over 25 years of professional experience in the field of water quality monitoring, modeling, and analysis. His Ph.D. work focused on environmental fluid mechanics. As a consultant and researcher, he has continued to apply his education to a wide range of problems including surface flow, temperature, and water quality assessments; formulating conceptual models and identifying the interactions between aquatic system elements; developing and applying analytical tools as well as complex numerical models to evaluate flow and the fate and transport of physical and chemical constituents in aquatic systems; and providing technical presentations, both orally and in writing, for diverse audiences.
Stacy K. Tanaka, Ph.D., P.E.
Dr. Tanaka has over 14 years professional experience in the field of water resources planning and modeling. Her Ph.D. focused on developing and applying models for improved management of environmental systems in the Klamath River and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Her technical specialties include environmental sampling/analysis, water resource planning, engineering technical support with experience with water resource projects, and experience in conceptual and feasibility designs for reservoir system management.
Jennifer C. Vaughn, M.S.
Ms. Vaughn has over 15 years experience in the field of water quality monitoring, modeling, and analysis. Her Masters work focused on measuring and identifying possible sources, sinks, and means of transportation of inorganic compounds, such as copper, zinc, and tin, throughout San Pablo Bay and key tributaries. As a consultant and researcher she has been in charge of designing, implementing, and managing laboratory oversight and data validation for surface water quality monitoring programs in the Klamath and Shasta Rivers. She has also been responsible for collecting and maintaining modeling data for the Russian and Klamath Rivers. She is familiar with numerical hydrodynamic and water quality models, including WQRRS, RMA, and CE-QUAL-W2.
Ibrahim E. Sogutlugil, M.S., P.E.
Mr. Sogutlugil has over 16 years experience in the field of water quality monitoring, modeling, and analysis. His Masters focused on methods for improving current mesoscale diagnostic wind field models and associated numerical methods, including incorporation of buoyancy and turbulence effects to simulate non-divergent wind field in the atmospheric boundary layer. As a consultant and researcher, he has developed and implemented flow and water quality models on the Klamath, Trinity, and American Rivers, including collecting and managing data, performing calibration and analysis of output. He is familiar with numerical hydrodynamic and water quality models, including WQRSS, RMA-2, RMA-11, and CE-QUAL-W2 and the FORTRAN and Matlab programming languages.
Peggy O. Basdekas, M.S.
Ms. Basdekas has over 25 years as a geologist and water resources scientist whose professional experience has evolved from studying rocks to modeling rock-water interactions to analyzing water resources and water quality issues. She has experience with sediment transport modeling as well as with PHabSim, R2Cross, RMA-11 and CE-QualW2. Currently, she is involved in supporting the development of a water temperature model for the upper Tuolumne River and its application to water temperature criteria based on life stages of anadromous fish.
Brooke N. Mejica, M.S.
Ms. Mejica has over 8 years experience in pre- and post-project monitoring and laboratory management. She is skilled in both river and lake monitoring, sampling and conducting experiments, with a variety of instruments and techniques, and adept at water temperature and flow modeling using the Water Temperature Transaction Tool (W3T). As a laboratory manager, Ms. Mejica hired employees, taught field and laboratory methods, employed a strict sampling schedule and maintained equipment. Her master’s thesis assessed the spatial and temporal differences in nutrient concentrations, detecting nutrient loads associated with fall rainstorms, surveying geology and geomorphic features within the watershed, GIS mapping, and preparing annual reports of Castle Lake in California.
Rankin Holmes, M.S.
Mr. Holmes has over 17 years of professional experience in water resource management, environmental monitoring, water transaction investment, program implementation, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and facilitating multi-stakeholder negotiations and water use agreements with private water users, irrigation districts, non-governmental organizations and state and federal agencies. His master’s degree focused on using remote sensing to evaluate rangeland conditions in neighboring protected areas of Russia and Mongolia. He taught field surveying and environmental monitoring, as well as, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at University of Montana, Missoula, using a variety of programs. He has coordinated large programmatic data collection and management, analysis, cartographic production and developed a geospatial database to track hundreds of water resource projects and conditions. He has been instrumental in flow restoration effectiveness monitoring, contract negotiations, instream flow agreements and worked with water users in a groundwater/surface water mitigation bank. He has written countless grants and coordinated Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) awards such as Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) and Technical Assistance Grants (TAG) for National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF).
Mariah McPherson, M.S., P.E.
Ms. McPherson is a licensed professional civil engineer, with over 12 years of experience in water quality monitoring and analysis, watershed hydrology, and water resource planning. She has been involved in a broad range of projects requiring her skills in watershed assessments, surface water modeling, floodplain restoration, water quality/chemistry studies, groundwater investigations, and instream flow analysis. She has extensive experience implementing and assisting in a wide variety of engineering/hydrology field studies.
Yujia Cai, M.S., EIT
Ms. Cai works as a Water Quality Scientist at Watercourse, currently supporting the development of Water Temperature Modeling Platform (WTMP). Her Masters work focused on hydrodynamics, modeling the formation of standing waves driven by surface jet using OpenFOAM. Before joining Watercourse, she developed, calibrated and evaluated a WEAP model and hydrologic analysis under a range of climate change scenarios for a community reservoir watershed. Her technical specialties including water temperature modeling (CE-QUAL-W2), data analysis (Program Python, and R), computational fluid dynamics (FLOW-3D and OpenFOAM), hydrologic modeling (WEAP), and GIS (ArcGIS).
Brendan Deas, B.S.
Mr. Deas works as a GIS Analyst at Watercourse ,and has experience in a variety of hydrological GIS applications. He has been involved in a broad range of projects, including in-house cartographic work as well as the development of a process for extracting accurate bathymetric data from historical map documents. He has significant experience implementing and assisting in a wide variety of field studies.