Elise Legarth

Background

About Elise Legarth

Elise’s experience is diverse and spans both hydrology and meteorology disciplines across New Zealand, Canada, USA and UK. In particular, her focus is on modelling the physical environment for engineering and agricultural applications. Elise’s work experience can be categorised into four disciplines: water quality modelling, water resource modelling, extreme precipitation and flooding hazard prediction and weather and stream flow forecasting. She is able to incorporate climate change science into all of her work. Elise provides consulting and data analysis services to a range of clients. Her work is often used to support environmental impact assessments and resource consent applications. Elise has experience in using complex catchment wide processed based hydrology and water quality models, coupled numerical weather prediction, rainfall-runoff models, horticultural and agricultural systems production models, machine learning, AI, statistical methods and other innovative techniques. Elise is also currently pursuing a PhD in Atmospheric Science at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Her research is focused on improving forecasting of extreme precipitation and streamflow as well as improving the methodology for calculating the probable maximum flood in a changing climate. Elise has been an invited peer-reviewer for a number of journals and is passionate about science communication. She has given many media interviews to leading Canadian broadcast networks on atmospheric rivers and flooding and enjoys teaching undergraduate classes. Elise has a number of strong academic achievements including holding a Vanier Scholarship - Canada's most prestigious doctoral scholarship. Elise is a driven, professional, and dedicated expert with experience in governance, strategic planning, EDI, and leading successful teams. She currently serves on the board of PeaceGeeks, a technology non-profit where she sits on the risk management and governance committees. Elise utilises many of the skillsets she developed while part of the New Zealand High Performance Kayak Team to ensure high quality outcomes. Hailing from New Zealand, Kaitiakitanga (the Māori concept of guardianship and the use of natural resources in a sustainable way) is something Elise keeps front of mind in her work. She also believes an in-depth theoretical understanding of both weather and water resource systems is needed and often overlooked due to the multifaceted nature hydrological research.