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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Although not exactly a research post, this is still geologically themed. When I first moved to Butte one of the first places I discovered was Quarry Brewing - a mining-and-geology themed brewhouse where lots of the rock-minded locals congregate. I had never experienced anything like this so far, which seems odd to me as earth scientists are fairly well known for partaking in the occasional beer. The drinks on tap here are quite good, but especially fun are the names they give to each new brew. Things like "Galena Gold," "Open Cab Copper," and "Schist Sour." My favorite lately has been the "Open Pit Porter." Having growlers in the form of large thermos' was also a nice touch. The brewhouse is decorated with many geologically-themed items, including their own rock and mineral display case! It's been a great place so far to stop by and talk rocks with a number of the regular patrons. It's also a good place to catch up on some paper (or research blog) writing in a peaceful environment. They go through a rotation of coming up with new brews with different names, and at some point I'll have to write up a more detailed post about each. Cheers!
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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!
Back in July I bid farewell to Temple University and Pennsylvania for my move out west to start the next step in my career in Montana. The ~35 hour drive from Philadelphia to Butte was fairly uneventful, although I did make some pit stops in Winona and the Twin Cities in Minnesota to visit friends and family for the 4th of July. After some Minnesota time I continued on my drive westward on I-90 through the Dakotas and into Montana, as the Great Plains slowly transformed into the Rockies. After unpacking for a few days my next mission was to report for duty as a temporary hydrology field camp instructor for the Indiana University Judson Mead Geologic Field Station in Cardwell, Montana, about 45 miles east of Butte. While most of the students spend the better part of two months at the field camp, at one point they break up into one-week focus sessions on a particular topic other than straight up geologic mapping. One of those sessions was an environmental science/hydrology focus, which I assisted with, being largely ran by Dr. Erika Elswick. The curriculum for the week consisted of such things as the use of water quality probes, how to calculate stream discharge, how to perform pump tests at wells, and in general how to characterize hydrological regimes. This was also a great opportunity for me to get a crash course in western Montana hydrology! With my dissertation research wrapped up one of my final duties at Temple University was to help get some drone research underway. This included initial flight training for some of the hydro research team, FAA Part 107 knowledge exam prep, and some test flights for our new Mavic Enterprise 2 Dual drone system. We were first given a bit of an equipment demo from Dr. Martin Helmke at West Chester University, including the Matrice and Mavic drone systems. We also got the opportunity to try out how each drone handled in flight, and the different sensors and cameras they were equipped with. Happy with what the drones were capable of we moved forward with setting up our own systems and getting some of our team trained. As the only member of the hydro team with aviation and drone experience, this initially meant taking some small steps. While we waited for our Mavic to arrive, we started taking online ground instruction courses on drone flight basics and FAA regulations. As much of this was similar to the training I received for a private pilot certificate I was able to help supplement the learning process. The initial phase of flight training included practicing some very small indoor drones in a lecture hall on campus. These little drones were fairly inexpensive (~$50) and we had plenty of replacement blades so there wasn't too much risk for some inevitable crashes. They also had very little in the way of automated flight capability, requiring the development of some solid "stick and rudder" skills to become good at flying. While the new drone systems essentially fly themselves, it's important to take control of the drone when necessary and be able to fly it manually. The Mavic finally arrived and we began some test flights to get comfortable flying and operating its camera system in the wild, and to get an idea of what it's capable of imaging. We were fairly pleased with the quality of the visible imagery, and happy to see the thermal camera's ability to contrast different materials. On a trip up to my field sites in central Pennsylvania's Nittany Valley we also tested the drone out in mapping some more rural features such as springs and streams which showed a nice contrast the surrounding ground and trees. We then took the drone out to some of the ongoing field sites to determine its utility for more urban hydrology studies. One of the sites was a small retention basin which appeared to have a surface temperature anomaly, being warmer on the upslope bank and cooler on the downslope bank, which may be indicating seepage into the ground, warranting some follow-up flights. Eventually we were given the heads-up to test the drone out around campus at an empty plot of land which has little to no foot traffic. Being close to the science building this new plot will provide a nice chance to do some test flying without having to drive out to one of the study sites. The last task I was helping with before leaving Temple was to test out the Mavic's auto-surveying abilities where you designate an area you wish to photograph and it determines the flight lines and photograph frequency. During the flight, which was largely photographing straight down, we aimed the camera upward to get a nice shot of campus and downtown Philadelphia! I'm sad to not be able to be around for the development of this drone research but I look forward to seeing some of the upcoming research!As the semester wrapped up I created my final Geology Cake for my time here at Temple University. This is a ~tradition I started my first year as a teaching assistant where I'd make a geology-themed cake for my labs if more than 75% of the students completed their student feedback forms. For the Groundwater Hydrology class this year I also used the time to do a study session for the final exam which was the next day. Everyone seemed to enjoy the cake which went quickly (despite some slumping), and hopefully they appreciated the study session, as well! Soon after finals was graduation! Although this was the 3rd time I had personally participated in a college graduation ceremony it was nice to be part of the hooding ceremony for all the PhD graduates. Also, our graduation caps came with 50% more corners than everyone else. With teaching duties and graduation ceremonies all completed end the semester, it's time to begin wrapping up loose ends while I'm still here in Philly. Being part of the Hydrology Lab, one of those tasks is to go through all of our sample fridges and get rid of old water samples. Many of these samples were part of worked that has already been published, but you just never know when you might want to re-run a sample! As a result, some of them are a bit expired, such as this this one I had collected with my first undergraduate research assistant Rachel a few years back!On Friday I successfully defended my PhD dissertation: Karst Aquifer Recharge and Conduit Flow Dynamics from High-Resolution Monitoring and Transport Modeling in Central Pennsylvania Springs. Of course I owe a huge thanks to my committee: Dr. Laura Toran (PI), Dr. David Grandstaff, Dr. Atsuhiro Muto, Dr. Ellen Herman, and Dr. Madeline Schreiber.
My paper, "Deducing Flow Path Mixing by Storm-Induced Bulk Chemistry and REE Variations in Two Karst Springs: With Trends Like These Who Needs Anomalies?" was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Hydrology.
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1YaFj52cuNC5Q Citation: Berglund, J.L. Toran, L., and Herman, E.K. In press. Deducing Flow Path Mixing by Storm-Induced Bulk Chemistry and REE Variations in Two Karst Springs: With Trends Like These Who Needs Anomalies? Accepted in Journal of Hydrology, January 2019. One tradition I've had while teaching intro geology labs was to make a geology-themed cake for the lab sections with a high completion rate for teaching evaluations. It tends to be a good motivator, although, let's be honest, I was probably going to make them regardless...(who doesn't like cake?). It's a classic layer-cake design (themed to geology). At the base is a layer of chocolate cake, followed by a red/white mixed vanilla cake layer, then a yellow cake layer with sprinkles, and finally capped with rice crispy treats (dyed blue in the lower half). Geologically-speaking, this represents layers of gabbro, gneiss, sandstone, and a karsty rice crispy layer with a saturated and unsaturated zone. Needless to say all the cake gets eaten pretty quick! We also had our annual departmental holiday party to wrap up the semester. During the party students often give out gifts and have a rock swap, while the department sometimes gives out their Richard Valentino Award for Excellence in Teaching and Student Mentoring. This year I was the recipient of the award! With no time to rest and finish grading I also had to get my talk on FEFLOW modeling of karst conduits ready for the American Geophysical Union meeting this year in Washington, DC. This was my first time attending an AGU meeting and I thought it all went well!
The National Geological Society of America meeting was held this last week in Indianapolis, Indiana. GSA conferences are always a great time to meet and catch up with old friends from other geology programs (Winona State, Missouri State) that I haven't had a chance to see in a while. The presentations are pretty great, too! I also presented my research on Ca/Zr ratios and rare earth element patterns as tracers in karst systems in the Dye Tracing and Emerging Environmental Tracers in Hydrogeology session hosted by my master's adviser Doug Gouzie. I also got the chance to speak with faculty from prospective programs that are looking to hire hydrology professors for next year. Overall, a good conference!
I've recently submitted a paper to the Journal of Hydrology on some of my major findings on rare earth element (REE) patterns in two adjacent karst springs after storms in central Pennsylvania. This was the bulk of my research during last summer (2017) although it began back in 2016 with baseflow sampling with a wide range of other nearby karst springs (see my earlier post, A New Chapter: jamesberglund.weebly.com/research-blog/a-new-chapter).
Rare earth elements have been getting more use lately as natural tracers in hydrologic systems as they can act as fingerprints for the different materials with which recharging and flowing water has interacted with. By collecting and analyzing spring water samples at various points throughout a storm hydrograph our aim was to better pinpoint the various sources with which the recharging water has interacted with and shed a little more light on the black box of karst aquifers. Time to wait for the revision process to get into full swing. Until then, time to work on my other paper on conduit flow modeling in FEFLOW! |