Dr. Pere Quintana Seguí
Ebro Observatory (URL - CSIC) • Roquetes, Spain
Scientist at Observatori de l'Ebre (Roquetes, Spain).
Researcher in Hydrology, Climate and Meteorology.
I study how soil, vegetation, atmosphere and human societies interact within our watersheds, in a context of climate change. My research focuses on distributed hydrological modeling, analysis of climate extremes such as droughts and floods, and the impact of climate change and human action on water resources.
I work with hydrological and meteorological data, hydrological models and satellite data to better understand the evolution of water resources. From the Observatori de l'Ebre, I contribute to national and international research projects that seek solutions to the water challenges of the 21st century.
News
We are seeking a talented and motivated PhD candidate for the doctoral thesis proposal "Leveraging remote sensing data, physical models and machine learning approaches to provide irrigation recommendations in a Mediterranean context" (URL3), within the TERRAMED Interregional Doctoral Program (Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND). The position features a dual-degree international cotutelle between the Ebro Observatory (Ramon Llull University, Spain) and CESBIO (University of Toulouse, France), with a secondment at isardSAT.
This is a fully funded 36-month contract under the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND program (~€2,600/month gross). Applications are open until December 31, 2026. For full details, eligibility rules, and application links, please see the PhD opportunity page.
My scientific literature filtering and summarization portal (Hydrology and Climate Change Article Summaries) was not performing well, as it was capturing too many articles, many of which were not relevant to my research area. Today I rolled out a significant update: I fixed several bugs and restructured the filtering pipeline to be much stricter regarding the scientific journals it analyzes.
I hope the portal becomes truly useful again; in fact, a quick review of the updated front page has already turned up several papers of great interest.
- 11/05/2026 🏛️ Participation in EGU26
Last week I presented in Vienna the talk "Trade-offs between data-driven and process-based approaches for root-zone soil moisture retrieval in a Mediterranean vineyard" (EGU26-21629), where we compare the effectiveness of physical and machine learning models for soil moisture monitoring in Terra Alta (Spain). The results obtained with the team from the Ebro Observatory and isardSAT highlight the superiority of XGBoost models, which achieve high precision and prove to be very robust even in the absence of precipitation data, as the surface moisture signal already contains the key information about infiltrations.
This research, linked to the DTE Hydrology Next (ESA) and Life eCOadapt50 (EU) projects, will allow us to improve operational monitoring and irrigation recommendations in non-instrumented plots using satellite data. You can check the presentation here.
- I have published a new article about my experience experimenting with language models to create a long scientific presentation. In this post, I detail how I used tools like Gemini CLI and NotebookLM to prepare a one-hour talk on flash floods.
Yesterday I participated in the "I Jornades Intercomunitàries de Rescat Aquàtic" (I Inter-community Aquatic Rescue Conference) organized by the Catalan Firefighters (Bombers de la Generalitat de Catalunya). I gave the talk "The impact of the climate crisis on intense precipitation and Mediterranean floods", where we analyzed the Valencia cut-off low using the risk equation framework.
The main conclusion is that, while climate change worsens these events, the increase in exposure and vulnerability is the determining factor. Climate change must not be an excuse to cover up urban planning and risk governance failures. It was an honor to share the day with the firefighters, who are on the front lines. You can watch the video of the talk here.