Research Blog
My research interests include high-resolution monitoring and modeling techniques to better understand groundwater flow in spatially and temporally complex geologic systems. Methods include geochemical sampling of groundwater after recharge events, fracture flow modeling, and the use of thermal imagery from drones. My study sites have included areas in Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Florida, and now western Montana. |
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Earlier this year I was awarded a grant from the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI), a research organization supported by the National Science Foundation to advance water science. The grant supports travel expenses in order to perform research at some additional sites while collaborating with other researchers. For my project I chose some additional spring sites at in contrasting karst settings to follow up with the rare earth element analysis that I performed in my central Pennsylvania springs. These sites were near Gainesville, Florida and Springfield, Missouri. This involved sending some equipment ahead in advance to collaborators at the University of Florida and Missouri State University, and then traveling to the sites to set up some autosamplers to collect spring water. My first stop was Florida, visiting some sites at O'Leno State Park and Ichetucknee Springs. There was no shortage of rain events while I was there (a problem I ran into often in Pennsylvania in the summer). Not wanting to risk the chance of not collecting spring samples due to some water level actuator issue I programmed the autosamplers to collect spring samples over the course of a few days. For one of the sites this meant 24 spring samples collected (no issues - woohoo!). The other site did have some technical issues on account of water getting into the base of the autosampler. With the bottles being empty they began to buoy upward and eventually impeding the sampler arm, so only about half of the bottles were filled. Still, plenty of samples to analyze! Next stop was over to Springfield, Missouri to monitor some springs and sites that were actually part of my master's degree research. The luck followed me as there also was no major shortage of storms headed that way when I arrived. This resulted in another good round of spring water samples collected to be analyzed. All of the samples from Florida and Missouri were filtered and acidified and sent back to Philadelphia to be organized before sent off for rare earth element and stable water isotope analysis. It'll be interesting to see how these results compare to our results from central Pennsylvania. A big thanks to Dr. Jon Martin at the University of Florida and Dr. Doug Gouzie at Missouri State University for agreeing to help out with the project and providing assistance for site selection and field help!
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A storm passed through my study site in Central PA over the last few days. There was enough rainfall to raise the water level at my springs enough to activate the ISCO auto-samplers, which began collecting water samples. Unfortunately, there was also an equipment casualty - broken pH bulb! Time for some maintenance. As it turns out, the storm was a double-pulse, allowing us to capture two recharge events in a single ISCO activation. While first noticed in the rain gauge data, it's most visually apparent in the turbidity of the ISCO bottles. Filtering and post-fieldwork-processing will definitely be keeping me busy for a few days!
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