Skip to content
Technical University of Munich

Overview

I am a volunteer Adjunct Professor in the Chair of Hydrology and River Basin Management (HFGM) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Under the guidance of Professor Disse, I am advising and mentoring his master and PhD students. I work full time as an Assistant Professor of Groundwater Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of California, Davis, where my research focuses on developing the next generation of hydrologic simulation models, scientific software, and decision-support tools for sustainable water management.

My work sits at the intersection of groundwater hydrology, surface-water operations, vadose-zone processes, land subsidence, seawater intrusion, recharge, uncertainty quantification, and regional water availability. I develop and apply physically based models that help agencies, water managers, and researchers evaluate how climate variability, land use, infrastructure, policy, and water demand interact across coupled groundwater–surface water systems.

Before joining UC Davis in 2025, I spent more than 15 years with the U.S. Geological Survey California Water Science Center, where I developed regional water-resource models and open-source simulation software for high-profile systems including California’s Central Valley, Salinas Valley, Pajaro Valley, the Rio Grande transboundary aquifer system, Mexico City, and Santa Barbara.

My technical background includes Fortran, Python, Rust, MODFLOW-family models, hydrogeology, geospatial analysis, numerical methods, optimization, and high-performance scientific computing. I am the lead developer and manager of the MODFLOW One-Water Hydrologic Flow Model (MF-OWHM), a USGS conjunctive-use modeling platform that tightly couples groundwater flow, surface-water flow, landscape processes, aquifer compaction and subsidence, reservoir operations, and related management processes (code.usgs.gov/modflow/mf-owhm). I also developed a semi-complete Fortran Standard Library that is used by MF-OWHM called the Batteries Included Fortran.

Research Interests

My research works to understand and improve water-availability assessments, groundwater sustainability planning, model transparency, and reproducible scientific computing. I am especially interested in advancing open-source hydrologic software that uses either permissive and/or copyleft licenses, improving model performance and uncertainty analysis, and training students to develop robust computational tools for water-resources decision making.

In summary, my research focuses on computer modeling of surface and subsurface hydrologic systems to estimate state variables and parameters, quantify undesirable results, and project future water availability under changing climate and management. 

This includes:

  • Modeling of groundwater, surface water, and vadose zone flow systems and their interaction
  • Groundwater related contaminant transport, seawater intrusion, land subsidence, and recharge
  • Geostatistical and hydrogeologic framework modeling
  • Parameter estimation and uncertainty quantification
  • Decision support for sustainable water resources management
  • Reservoir operations

Research Profiles

ORCiD           GoogleScholar           GitHub 

 

Contact

  • scott.boyce@tum.de
  • seboyce@ucdavis.edu

Education

  • 2015 | PhD, Civil Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
    • Major: Hydrology and Water Resources Engineering
    • Minor 1: Operations Research and Optimization Theory
    • Minor 2: Biostatistics
    • Dissertation: Model Reduction via Proper Orthogonal Decomposition of Confined and Unconfined Groundwater-Flow
       
  • 2009 | MS, Civil Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles
     
  • 2003 | BS, Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
    • Army ROTC Cadet in Surfrider Battalion
    • UC LEADS Scholarship (2001-2003; Leadership Excellence through Advanced Degrees)

Professional Experience

  • 2025 – present |  Assistant Professor of Groundwater Hydrology and Water Resources; University of California, Davis
  • 2020 – present |  Adjunct Professor; Hydrology and River Basin Management; TUM
  • 2010 – 2025     |  Research Hydrologist ; United States Geological Survey, California Water Science Center

 

Awards

Highlighted Publications

  • Boyce, S.E., Hanson, R.T., Ferguson, I., Schmid, W., Henson, W., Reimann, T., Mehl, S.M., and Earll, M.M., 2020, One-Water Hydrologic Flow Model: A MODFLOW Based Conjunctive Use and Integrated Hydrologic Flow Model: U.S. Geological Survey Techniques and Methods 6-A60, 435 p. https://doi.org/10.3133/tm6a60
  • Alattar, M., Troy, T., Russo, T. and Boyce, S. E., 2020, Modeling the surface water and groundwater budgets of the US using MODFLOW-OWHM. Advances in Water Resources, 143, p. 103682, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2020.103682
  • Boyce, S.E., Nishikawa, T., and Yeh, W. W.G., 2015, Reduced order modeling of the Newton formulation of MODFLOW to solve unconfined groundwater flow. Advances in Water Resources, 83, 250-262. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2015.06.005
    • Selected by the U.S. Office of Groundwater for best groundwater report by an early career scientist

Publications

  • Boyce, S.E. and Ferguson, I.M., 2021, MODFLOW One-Water Hydrologic Flow Model (MF-OWHM) Conjunctive Use and Integrated Hydrologic Flow Modeling Software with Surface Water Operations, version 2.1.0: U.S. Geological Survey Software Release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9P8I8GS
  • Boyce, S.E., 2020, MODFLOW One-Water Hydrologic Flow Model (MF-OWHM) Conjunctive Use and Integrated Hydrologic Flow Modeling Software, version 2.0.x: U.S. Geological Survey Software Release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9P8I8GS
  • Hanson, R.T., Ritchie, A.B., Boyce, S.E., Galanter, A.E., Ferguson, I.A., Flint, L.E., and Henson, W.R., 2018, Rio Grande transboundary integrated hydrologic model and water-availability analysis, New Mexico and Texas, United States, and Northern Chihuahua, Mexico: U.S Geological Survey Open-File Report 2018–1091, 185 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20181091
  • Ritchie, A., Hanson, R.T., Galanter, A., Boyce, S., Dagmar, N., and Shephard, Z., 2018, Data release of digital hydrologic data for the Rio Grande transboundary region of New Mexico, Texas, USA and northern Chihuahua, Mexico: U.S. Geological Survey data release
  • Cromwell, G. and Boyce, S.E., 2018, Chapter B: Overview of Hydrogeologic Framework Model in Nishikawa, T., ed., 2018, Santa Barbara and Foothill groundwater basins Geohydrology and optimal water resources management—Developed using density dependent solute transport and optimization models (pp 31-118): U.S. Geological Survey, Scientific Investigations Report 2018-5059, https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20185059
  • Stanko, Z. P., Boyce, S. E., and Yeh, W. W. G., 2016, Nonlinear model reduction of unconfined groundwater flow using POD and DEIM. Advances in Water Resources, 97, 130-143. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2016.09.005
  • Xu, B., Boyce, S. E., Zhang, Y., Liu, Q., Guo, L., and Zhong, P. A., 2016, Stochastic Programming with a Joint Chance Constraint Model for Reservoir Refill Operation Considering Flood Risk. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 04016067. http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000715
  • Ferguson, I., Llewellyn, D., Hanson, R.T., Boyce, S., 2015, User Guide to the Surface Water Operations Process: An Integrated Approach to Simulating Large-Scale Surface Water Management in MODFLOW-Based Hydrologic Models. US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Technical Memorandum No. 86-68210-2016-02
  • Boyce, S.E., 2015, Model Reduction via Proper Orthogonal Decomposition of Transient Confined and Unconfined Groundwater Flow, PhD thesis, University of California Los Angeles. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0k31q9qr
  • Boyce, S.E. and Yeh, W. W.G., 2014, Parameter-independent model reduction of transient groundwater flow models: Application to inverse problems. Advances in Water Resources, 69, 168-180. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2014.04.009
  • Hanson, R.T., Boyce, S.E., Schmid, W., Hughes, J.D., Mehl, S.M., Leake, S.A., Maddock, T. III, and Niswonger, R.G., 2014, One-Water Hydrologic Flow Model (MODFLOW-OWHM). U.S. Geological Survey TM6-A51, 120 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/tm6A51
To top