News

By Emily Case-Buskirk, NDMC Communications Specialist

A recent graduate started a job with the Arizona Department of Water Resources this summer. 

Quinton Deppert got his master’s degree in Natural Resource Sciences with a specialization in Hydrological Sciences this May. Previously, he earned his bachelor’s degree in environmental management with a minor in geography from Indiana University. 

Deppert’s undergraduate studies drew him into drought research. He took a class on climate change impacts and completed an undergraduate research assistantship investigating how drought impacts trees in a lab setting. 

“I thought, ‘What if I was someone who knew a lot about drought?’ That seemed like a good area to look more into,” he said. 

After graduating from college, he interned at the City of Bloomington in Indiana. After that experience, he joined the NASA DEVELOP Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center at the University of Virginia. Now called the NASA EarthRISE Developers Academy, it is a 10-week program that allows educators and students to work with partners on real-world challenges.  

During his time in the NASA DEVELOP program, Deppert worked with the Alabama Office of the State Climatologist on projects about flash drought in the U.S. Southeast. He also worked with the National Forest Corporation on extreme wildfire seasons in Chile. 

As he did more drought-specific research, Deppert found the names of researchers affiliated with the National Drought Mitigation Center coming up in articles. He decided to apply for a graduate assistantship with the NDMC.  

At the NDMC, he worked on projects including the Hawaiian Forest Drought Response Index (HiForDRI).  

His work with HiForDRI led him to a discovery that helps with flash drought research: a  form of satellite imagery in the microwave spectrum that provides near-daily updates on vegetation conditions.  

This inspired Deppert’s master’s thesis, which focuses on measuring flash drought impacts on vegetation from satellite more quickly than previous methods. His advisors were Mark Svoboda, NDMC director, and Francisco Munoz-Arriola, professor of hydroinformatics and integrated hydroclimate in the UNL Department of Biological Systems Engineering and School of Natural Resources. 

"A lot of the flash drought research has not really focused on vegetation,” he said. “If you look at flash drought indices and there are many now, there are still not many that capture how droughts impact vegetation.” 

Flash drought is a quick-onset drought that develops over the course of a few weeks or up to a month. The primary flash drought indicators currently include precipitation, soil moisture, evapotranspiration and temperature. Meanwhile, vegetation indices like the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) aren’t used because they rely on longer observation windows that can take weeks to months, which is too slow for flash drought detection. 

Deppert's project focuses on vegetation optical depth (VOD), a microwave-based proxy for vegetation water content and structure. Most importantly, it bypasses any interference from cloud cover, which is the primary limitation of optical remote sensing methods. He demonstrated that it can allow scientists to watch plants experience drought impacts as they happen. 

Deppert validated the microwave data with in-situ data from the University of Nebraska Eastern Nebraska Research and Extension Center in Mead, as well as data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite. 

“(The Mead research center) is so valuable, I don’t know what I would have done for my thesis without that,” he said. “I’m thankful to Dr. Trenton Franz and Dr. Andy Suyker who pointed me to that data.” 

By comparing the in-situ data with four-week periods of flash drought, Deppert found it was possible to measure flash drought impacts on vegetation. 

He presented a poster on the research that would become his thesis at the American Meteorological Society and won third place on his poster presentation. The research represents an important piece of a growing conversation about using vegetation-related data in flash drought contexts. Similar research was published in Geophysical Research Letters in April 2026. 

As he got close to finishing his program, Deppert knew he wanted to work with a government agency in the U.S. that manages water. He landed a job with the Arizona Department of Water Resources in Phoenix.  

As a water resources specialist in the Active Management Area Compliance Section, he will be focusing on compliance with the state’s water management laws. He also plans to continue studying water law. 

The role combines his experiences with NASA and the NDMC with his undergraduate degree, which encompassed both environmental policy with science. 

Looking back on his experience, he said the journey to his master’s degree wasn’t without its challenges. Unluckily, Deppert endured multiple broken bones during his time in the program. He broke his arm in a bicycle accident, and broke his foot in a car accident.  

He is grateful to UNL’s transportation and physical therapy services for helping him cope with the difficulties these incidents presented. 

“Being disabled as a grad student presented a certain set of challenges that were difficult, but not impossible, to overcome," he said. "I like to joke that I hurt myself because I'm from somewhere hilly, and I wasn't prepared for how flat Nebraska is."

Deppert said he’s looking forward setting out in a new direction and living in the Southwest after spending most of his life in the eastern U.S.  

“I’ve always appreciated the desert. Just a change of scenery,” he said.