USI Undergraduate Water Resources Teaching and Research Lab

05/03/2022

So I'm putzing around at home a couple days ago on a sunny Sunday and the phone rings. It's Chanse Ford. Chanse graduated from USI Geology ≈ 7 years ago. He was the university's Trustees Distinguished Merit Award winner, and served as my Research Assistant for a couple years on groundwater-surface water interactions in Manistee National Forest. That undergrad research formed the foundation of his MS work at Western Michigan University where he used stable isotope geochemistry to quantify that groundwater-surface water interaction. Now he's almost a Dr. When I say hello on the phone, he says something like..."I'm sitting here preparing my PhD defense presentation and thought about you...it's your damn fault that I'm in this mess." I smiled. Chanse is completing his PhD work examining the impacts of climate change on snowmelt and altered Earth-surface hydrology in temperate regions. I'm glad Chanse is working on this problem (you are too even if you don't know it)...and that he will find other important problems to address throughout his career. It's another win for science and humanity.

03/30/2022

It's recent history, but the Women's History of the USI Undergraduate Water Resources lab is rich! In celebration of the women who have advanced good water and environmental science, and have moved on to productive careers that benefit humanity, I'd like to shout out...
Laura (Bordelon) Katrysnki, Elizabeth Curtis-Robinson, Tina (Bledsoe) Kettinger, Maria (Bengert) Wedding, Jessica (Heighton) Winget, Amy Bleicroth-King, Morgan Devine, Kristen (Schmeisser) King, Holly Hume, Lauren Maurer, Rachel Bacher, Anna Starks, Payton Lykins-Parke, Hannah Walker, Kaitland Filbert, Alexis Ludge, and Sydra Parker.

01/18/2022

The USI Undergraduate Water Resources Teaching and Research Lab is part of an official network of water resources monitoring sites in Indiana. That summary is posted at:

Indiana Water ReportThe Indiana Water Report is a publication of the Indiana Water Monitoring Council (InWMC) that summarizes important water-related monitoring and research happening in Indiana. The Indiana Water Report is intended to help those working to manage water resources in Indiana do so mo...

12/04/2020

Alexis Ludge presented on plastics contamination in the Great Lakes while the USI Geology 390 class crossed Lake Michigan on the SS Badger. Just this week, we learned that her Endeavor! grant proposal to investigate plastic contamination in Reflection Lake on the USI Campus was successful and funded! Congratulations Alexis!

06/15/2020

Kaitland Filbert, ENVS '20 (shown here recording soil moisture in Manistee NF, MI), successfully developed an Endeavor! Undergraduate Research Proposal this spring. That award will fund the purchase of telemetry instrumentation to generate a real-time accessible data stream from selected sites in the Manistee NF research area. Ideally these data will be incorporated into a GIS web-interface for access by public land resource managers. Now...I just hope that we can actually get into the field for deployment!

03/18/2020

Water resource field observations during this time of social distancing: cover crop and grassed waterway to the right, open ditch to the left. Any environmental questions...or doubt?

05/13/2019

I will always say that nothing is more rewarding about my job than when a former student, and now a friend and colleague, reaches out to get together while back in the area. Great to see Aaron Feldhaus and hear of his successful career with the California Water Control Board.

02/11/2019

Today is the United Nation's, International Day of Women and Girls in Science, and here are just two of the many outstanding women scientists that I had the good fortune to work with. Holly Hume (center) worked with me as an RA on shallow groundwater dynamics in Michigan, and is now an Environmental Scientist with Lochmueller Group in Southern Indiana. Payton Lykins Parke (right) worked on Earth tide dynamics in a bedrock aquifer, and now works for ACS Environmental in Southern California. It would be easy to fill up this feed with the outstanding women scientists that have passed through the USI Geology and Physics program.
https://lnkd.in/gMqPAXV

02/01/2019

Here's what a high-pressure, polar vortex incursion into Southern Indiana looks like to 50-ft deep groundwater. A barometric pressure increase of >25 mm Hg, centered on 1/31/19, generated a nearly mirror-image, one foot decline in groundwater levels in the Inglefield Sandstone Aquifer!

12/28/2018

The true reward of my job is when former research assistants, like Chanse Ford, reach out for a visit to share their success story, while they are back in town. Chanse is in year three of his PhD program at Michigan State University, studying climate change impacts to snowmelt, runoff generation, and groundwater recharge.

12/06/2018

GEOL441 (Hydrogeology) students have examined the relation between soil organic carbon and soil moisture in a Savanna Ecosystem Restoration site, calculated specific yield for the unconfined sand in a headwater riparian zone, measured evapotranspiration fluxes in a Northern Riparian Woodland, and investigated the relationship between stream stage and Total Dissolved Solids in a Michigan State Natural River...not a bad semester worth of work.

11/09/2018

Some good evidence that our work in Manistee National Forest is of interest to the larger scientific community and has a place in current efforts to quantify the impacts of global warming. Unbeknownst to me, my good friend and USGS colleague, Don Rosenberry, took a picture from the standing room only area at the annual GSA meeting while I discussed the climate change implications of data we are collecting from shallow groundwater in Michigan. More to come...