Balew joined the GIWS in October 2017. He holds a Ph.D. in watershed modelling (2016) from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada and a Masters in Water Resources Engineering (2008) from the K.U. Leuven, Belgium. At present, he is contributing to the Prairie Water save team by conducting research on hydrological modeling of different watersheds across the prairies.

Prasad Daggupati, Rituraj Shukla, Balew Mekonnen, Ramesh Rudra, Asim Biswas, Pradeep K Goel, Shiv Prasher, Wanhong Yang. 2018. Hydrological Responses to Various Land Use, Soil, and Weather Inputs in Northern Lake Erie Basin in Canada. Water, 10(2):222-237.

Mekonnen, B.A., Mazurek, K.A., and Putz, G. 2016. Incorporating landscape depression heterogeneity into the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model using a probability distribution. Hydrological Processes, 30(13), 2373-2389, DOI: 10.1002/hyp.10800

Mekonnen, B.A., Mazurek, K.A., and Putz, G. 2016. Sediment export modeling in cold climate prairie watersheds. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, 21(5), doi:10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0001336.

Mekonnen, B.A., Mazurek, K.A., and Putz, G. 2016. Nutrient export modeling and effects of agricultural managmenet practices in old-climate prairie watershed: Assiniboine Watershed. Agricultural Water Management, DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2016.06.023.

Mekonnen, B., Naemi, A., Mazurek, K.A., Elshorbage, A., and Putz, G. (2015). Hybrid Modeling approach in prairie hydrology: Fusing data-driven and process-based hydrological models. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 60(9), 1473-1489.