Jeff Dozier

Jeff Dozier (1944 – 2024)

Jeff Dozier, an environmental scientist, snow hydrologist, researcher, and academic died tragically on November 17. A resident of Mammoth Lakes, Jeff turned 80 in August 2024 and was looking forward to months of skiing this winter thanks to Mammoth Mountain’s free season passes to those over 80. The night before Jeff was to fly from Reno to attend a scientific conference, he was struck by a truck while in a crosswalk. He suffered multiple injuries that, despite the expertise and unrelenting efforts of the surgical and ICU teams at Renown Medical Center, resulted in his death.

Jeff was born and raised in Stockton, California, graduated in the class of 1962 from Stagg High School, earned a bachelor’s degree from Cal State Hayward and received a Master’s and PhD from the University of Michigan. In 1971, he joined Cal State Hayward as a lecturer until he moved to the Geography Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1974, where he spent the remainder of his teaching career. 

With his father and uncle, Jack and Bill Dozier, Jeff led six climbing expeditions to the Hindu Kush range of Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s, where he and his partners made multiple first ascents. On a snow-covered slope in Afghanistan, Jeff realized he had no idea whether it would avalanche and kill them all, and when he returned home, he turned to academic research in snow hydrology to find answers. 

Jeff’s research combined field studies in high mountains and satellite remote sensing of snow properties. His findings and algorithms are used by hydrologists, water managers, and climate researchers worldwide. His work in the world’s mountains addresses the storage and melting of snow and has economic and social significance to the many people who depend on snow for their water resources. 

Jeff worked as Project Scientist for Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s High-resolution Imaging Spectrometer program and as the Project Scientist for the NASA’s Earth Observation System. His work in remote sensing extended beyond snow to detection of flames by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, the first such a detection from space, and the foundation for subsequent satellite fire-detection algorithms. 

In 2013, his expertise was sought for the Academy award-winning film “Frozen” and he is listed in the credits as an advisor for his help explaining the proper way to illustrate snow. He is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and American Association for the Advancement of Science and received NASA’s William T. Pecora award for scientific excellence and leadership in snow hydrology, remote sensing, and information systems and NASA’s Public Service Medal. Dozier Dome in Tuolumne Meadows is named after him.

In 1994, Jeff was named the founding Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UCSB, where for six years he recruited renowned faculty and developed one of the top environmental programs in the country. After his role as Dean, Jeff returned as professor in the Bren School, educating the next generation of Earth scientists. He was the primary advisor for 20 Ph.D. students and 34 Masters students, providing them with the path to realize their passions for the science of mountains, snow, and water. His favorite undergraduate class, The Alpine Snowpack, was a mixture of field and lecture-based instruction in the properties of snow.

At the time of his death, Jeff had active research projects on the International Space Station and had collaborations with colleagues in Europe and Asia. He continued to attend conferences that piqued his curiosity in disciplines beyond his own. 

Jeff is survived by his wife Linda, his children Jill, Hayden (Sudathip), Simone, Jackson and Grayson, stepmother Shirley Dozier of Stockton, siblings Julie Nelson (Jamie) of Sacramento and Daniel Dozier (Ewa) of Stockton, grandchildren Tenaya, Owen, Skyler, and Sasha, and numerous nieces and nephews. More broadly, he is survived by his academic family who each count their time with Jeff among the greatest gifts that life can provide. Memorial services for friends and family will occur in the future in the Mammoth Lakes area. The flag at UC Santa Barbara will be lowered to half-mast in his honor on Tuesday, December 17, 2024.

Biography

Jeff came to UCSB Geography in Fall 1974 as one of David Simonett's three new Assistant Professors. He was a Geography Professor until August 1994, when he became the Founding Dean of the Bren School. He maintained an affiliated member of the Geography faculty until his retirement in July 2018. A long-time backcountry skier, mountaineer, and rock climber, he led six expeditions to the Hindu Kush range in Afghanistan and has a dozen first ascents there, hence his interest in the world’s mountains. Dozier Dome in Tuolumne Meadows is named after him. He is a Distinguished Scientist in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of AAAS and AGU.

Research

Jeff’s research encompasses snow hydrology, Earth system science, remote sensing, and information systems. He particularly focuses on snow, water, and ice in the Sierra Nevada and High Mountain Asia, where more than a billion people depend on snowmelt for their water resources, and where the austere surface infrastructure requires that most of the analyses come from remotely sensed data. His insights about the study of mountain snow have enabled him and his students to pursue modern snow science with creativity and focus that continue to yield benefits for Earth science and its social significance. He has led interdisciplinary studies in three areas: one addresses hydrology and biogeochemistry in the mountain environment and adjacent lowlands; the second examines hydrologic science, environmental engineering, and social science in the water environment; the third is in the integration of environmental science and remote sensing with computer science and technology.

Selected Publications

Bair, E. H., Rittger, K., Davis, R. E., Painter, T. H., & Dozier, J. (2016). Validating reconstruction of snow water equivalent in California's Sierra Nevada using measurements from the NASA Airborne Snow Observatory. Water Resources Research, 52, 8437-8460. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016WR018704

Bair, E. H., Stillinger, T., & Dozier, J. (2020). Snow Property Inversion from Remote Sensing (SPIReS): A generalized multispectral unmixing approach with examples from MODIS and Landsat 8 OLI. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2020.3040328

Brandt, W. T., Bormann, K. J., Cannon, F., Deems, J. S., Painter, T. H., Steinhoff, D. F., & Dozier, J. (2020). Quantifying the spatial variability of a snowstorm using differential airborne lidar. Water Resources Research, 56, e2019WR025331. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025331

Dozier, J. (1981). A method for satellite identification of surface temperature fields of subpixel resolution. Remote Sensing of Environment, 11, 221-229. https://doi.org/10.1016/0034-4257(81)90021-3

Dozier, J. (1989). Spectral signature of alpine snow cover from the Landsat Thematic Mapper. Remote Sensing of Environment, 28, 9-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/0034-4257(89)90101-6

Dozier, J., Bair, E. H., & Davis, R. E. (2016). Estimating the spatial distribution of snow water equivalent in the world's mountains. WIREs Water, 3, 461-474. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1140

Frew, J. E., & Dozier, J. (2012). Environmental informatics. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 37, 449-472. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-042711-121244

Melack, J. M., Sadro, S., Sickman, J. O., & Dozier, J. (2021). Lakes and Watersheds of California's Sierra Nevada: Responses to Environmental Change. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Painter, T. H., Skiles, S. M., Deems, J. S., Brandt, W. T., & Dozier, J. (2018). Variation in rising limb of Colorado River snowmelt runoff hydrograph controlled by dust radiative forcing in snow. Geophysical Research Letters, 45, 797–808. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL075826

Wan, Z., & Dozier, J. (1996). A generalized split-window algorithm for retrieving land-surface temperature from space. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 34, 892-905. https://doi.org/10.1109/36.508406