News & Findings
News Items:
- CSM Hydro professor Ning Lu's paper about reserviors and earthquakes is receiving considerable attention, including from Science Magazine. It was also one of the top weekly download papers (82 times). Science Now
- PhD student Megan Smith was awarded a Farvolden prize for best student paper at the 2009 Ground Water Summit in Tucson, Arizona for her work on using polymers and chemical oxidants to enhance groundwater remediation. This is the second year in a row Megan has won this award.
- Taylor Dixon won a LARS Master’s Scholarship from the American Water Works Association.
- MS student Sarah Roberts was awarded an NSF fellowship to work with researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on transport of hormones and pharmaceuticals in soils and groundwater during summer 2009.
- Professor David Benson was elected to Fellowship in the Geological Society of America. He was cited for his work on fractal calculus and the connection to contaminant transport in aquifers.
- Professor Tissa Illangasekare was elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union for this work on multidimensional laboratory experiments for hydrologic systems.
- A recent paper by Professor Reed Maxwell on groundwater and climate change is being touted by the American Chemical Society and Nature.
- Professor David Benson was given an invited professorship at the University of Rennes, France. He spent three weeks there working on anomalous dispersion with researchers from Rennes and the University of Catalonia (Barcelona).
- Professors John McCray, Reed Maxwell and Alexis Sitchler recently received a $0.9M grant from EPA to study the risks imposed by carbon sequestration on overlying aquifers. McCray and Sitchler are also co-PIs on a $1.8M grant from DoE on carbon sequestration for enhanced oil recovery.
- Former hydrology student Jason Gurdak accepts Assistant Professor position at San Francisco State University, Department of Geosciences.
Recent Scientific Manuscripts:
*indicates student lead author
| Climate Change and the Vadose Zone |
*Gurdak, J.J., Hanson, R.T., McMahon, P.B., Bruce, B.W., McCray, J.E., Thyne, G.D., 2007. Climate variability controls on unsaturated water and chemical movement, High Plains aquifer, United States, Vadose Zone Journal, 6, 533–547. |
| Stream Tracer Testing |
*Payn R. A., M. N. Gooseff, D. A. Benson, O. A. Cirpka, J. P.
Zarnetske, W. B. Bowden, J. P. McNamara, J. H. Bradford (2008), Comparison of instantaneous and constant-rate stream tracer
experiments through non-parametric analysis of residence time
distributions, Water Resour. Res., 44, W06404,
doi:10.1029/2007WR006274. |
| Microbiological Stabilization of Radioactive Metals |
Ulrich KU, Singh A, Schofield EJ, Bargar JR, Veeramani H, Sharp JO, Bernier-Latmani R, Giammar DE (2008). Dissolution of biogenic and synthetic UO2 under varied reducing conditions. Environ. Sci. Technol. 42:5600-5606. |
| Environmental Microbiology |
Ulrich KU, Singh A, Schofield EJ, Bargar JR, Veeramani H, Sharp JO, Bernier-Latmani R, Giammar DE (2008). Dissolution of biogenic and synthetic UO2 under varied reducing conditions. Environ. Sci. Technol. 42:5600-5606.
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| Groundwater and Climate Change
|
Maxwell, R.M. and Kollet, S.J. Interdependence of groundwater dynamics and land-energy feedbacks under climate change. Nature Geoscience 1(10) 665-669, doi:10.1038/ngeo315, 2008.
|
| Scaling models of groundwater solute transport |
*Monnig, N. D., D. A. Benson, and M. M. Meerschaert (2008), Ensemble solute transport in two-dimensional operator-scaling random fields, Water Resour. Res., 44, W02434, doi:10.1029/2007WR005998.
|
| Environmental Hydrohemistry | Vermilyea, A.W.* and Voelker, B.M., 2009. Photo-Fenton reaction at near-neutral pH. Environmental Science and Technology. In press.
|
| Microbial Degradation of Emerging Organic Contaminants
|
Sharp JO, Sales C, LeBlanc J, Liu J, Wood T, Eltis L, Mohn W, and Alvarez-Cohen L (2007). An inducible propane monooxygenase is responsible for n-nitrosodimethylamine degradation by Rhodococcus sp. strain RHA1. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 73:6930-6938.
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| Interconnections within the hydrologic cycle |
Kollet, S.J. and Maxwell, R.M., Capturing the influence of groundwater dynamics on land surface processes using an integrated, distributed watershed model. Water Resources Research 44: W02402, 2008.
|
| Ground Water Restoration |
*Smith, M M., Silva, J.A.K., Munakata-Marr, J., McCray, J. E., 2008. Compatibility of polymers and chemical oxidants for enhanced groundwater remediation. Environ. Sci. Technol., 42 (24) 9296-9301. |
| Environmental Microbiology |
Sharp JO, Sales C, LeBlanc J, Liu J, Wood T, Eltis L, Mohn W, and Alvarez-Cohen L (2007). An inducible propane monooxygenase is responsible for n-nitrosodimethylamine degradation by Rhodococcus sp. strain RHA1. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 73:6930-6938.
|
| Stream channel water balance |
*Payn, R. A., M. N. Gooseff, B. L. McGlynn, K. E. Bencala, and S. M.
Wondzell (in press), Channel water balance and exchange with subsurface flow along a mountain headwater stream in Montana, USA, Water Resources Research, doi:10.1029/2008WR007644. |
| NAPL transport |
*Johnson, R., and E. Poeter. 2006. Insights into the use of time-lapse GPR data as observations for inverse multiphase flow simulations of DNAPL migration. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 89: 136-155. |
| Transient hydrologic storage in streams
|
*Briggs, M. A., M. N. Gooseff, C. D. Arp, and M. A. Baker (2009), A method for estimating surface transient storage parameters for streams with concurrent hyporheic storage, Water Resour. Res., 45, W00D27, doi:10.1029/2008WR006959.
|
| Energy Water Issues |
McCray, J.E., Thyne, G.D., 2008. Joint sustainability of water resources and petroleum-energy production, Editorial, Ground Water, in press. |
| Groundwater flow |
Edington, D., and E. Poeter, 2006, Stratigraphic control of flow and transport characteristics, Ground Water, 44(6): 826-831. |
| Solute Transport | Zhang, Y., D.A. Benson, M.M. Meerschaert, E.M. LaBolle, and H.-P. Scheffler. 2006. Random walk approximation of fractional-order multiscaling anomalous diffusion. Physical Review E, 74, 026706. |
| Solute Transport | Zhang, Y., D.A. Benson, M.M. Meerschaert, and H.-P. Scheffler. 2006. On using random walks to solve the space-rractional advection-dispersion equations. Journal of Statistical Physics, Pages 1-22, DOI 10.1007/s10955-006-9042-x. |
| Solute Transport | Benson, D. A., M. M. Meerschaert, B. Baeumer, and H. Scheffler 2006. Aquifer operator scaling and the effect on solute mixing and dispersion, Water Resources Research, 42, W01415, doi:10.1029/2004WR003755. |
| Mountain Watersheds |
*Lemonds, P.J., McCray, J.E., 2007. Modeling hydrology in a small Rocky Mountain watershed serving large urban populations, J. Amer. Water Resources Assoc. (JAWRA), 43(4), 875-887. |
| Fracture Flow in Groundwater | *Wellman, T. P., and E. P. Poeter, 2006, Evaluating the uncertainty in predicting spatially variable representative elementary scales in fractured aquifers, Water Resources Research, 42, W08410, doi:10.1029/2005WR004431. |
| Soil Mechanics | *Likos, W.J., and Lu, N. 2006. Pore-scale analysis of bulk volume change from crystaline interlayer swelling in Na+ - and Ca2+ smectite. Clays and Clay Minerals, 54(4), 516-529. |
| Soil Mechanics | *Lechman, J., Lu, N., and Wu, D. 2006. Hysteresis of capillary stress and soil suction in mono-disperse disk-shaped particles. Journal of Engineering Mechanics, 132(5), 565-576. |
| Soil Mechanics | Lu, N., Wayllace, A., Carrera, J., and Likos, W.J. 2006. Constant flow method for concurrently measuring soil-water characteristic curve and hydraulic conductivity function. Journal of Geotechnical Testing, 29(3), 256-266. |
| Soil Mechanics | Lu, N., and Likos, W.J. 2006. Suction stress characteristic curve for unsaturated soil. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 132(2), 131-142. |
MODFLOW Conference 2006 |
Poeter E.P, C. Zheng, and M.C. Hill, 2006, editors for Proceedings of MODFLOW and MORE 2006: Managing Ground-Water Systems Conference of the International Ground-Water Modeling Center, Golden, CO, 810p. |
| Wastewater Treatment | *Rauch-Williams, T. & JE Drewes. 2006. Using soil biomass as an indicator for the biological removal of effluent-derived organic carbon during soil infiltration. Water Research 40, 961-968. |
| Water Treatment Technology | *Xu, P., Drewes, J. E., Kim, T. Bellona, C. & Amy, G. 2006. Effect of membrane fouling on transport of emerging organic contaminants in NF/RO membrane applications. Journal of Membrane Science 279, 165-175. |