Nature Geoscience is digging hard into water underground – the February issue is part of a special focus on groundwater. The cover this month is a gorgeous (groundwater-filled?) waterfall by Glen Jasechko, Scott’s brother. The groundwater focus includes: commentary on drought in the Anthropocene, led by Anne van Loon news and views pieces by Ying Fan and Tamara Goldin our paper on the ...[Read More]
Water Canada article on our research
Scott Jasechko and I wrote an article for Water Canada about our research on modern groundwater published last fall in Nature Geoscience. We tried desperately to use plain language… how did we do? See WaterCanadaWinter2016
Fantasy Bottled Water Brands of Tomorrow: Ogallala Water
We are peering into the not-so-distant future to imagine what the brand geniuses of the future will be serving up for discerning water consumers! The Brand: Ogallala Source: Great Plains Why? Deep down, you know you love it. Promotional Copy: Ogallala Water: GET PUMPED. Swill waters run deep so we go deep, deep, deep into the Great Plains water table to pipe this ancient, undisturbed water to your ...[Read More]
Where’s the beef? Or should I say where’s the groundwater?
This graphic is from Owen Miles’ watermurica blog
How easily does our understanding of ‘CRUSTAL PERMEABILITY’ flow ? A new Geofluids special edition…
Permeability is a crazy parameter: heterogeneous on many spatial scales, highly variable over up to 20 orders of magnitude, and transient on many temporal scales. Yet, for better or for worse it is essential to our understanding of numerous earth processes, as well as how human impact and interact with the earth. I have had the honor of guest editing a special issue of Geofluids called ‘Cru ...[Read More]
A new data portal for permeability!
Permeability data is tucked many dusty corners of the web and in even dustier reports, books and thesis. The purpose of the Crustal Permeability Data Portal is to ‘unearth’ (pun intended!) permeability data by providing links to online, peer-reviewed permeability data that is open to anyone around the world. This data portal collates links to other data sources rather than hosting data and is a co ...[Read More]
When it snows, it pours (into aquifers)! Recharge seasonality around the world…
Written by Scott Jasechko University of Calgary isohydro.ca twitter.com/sjasechko Groundwater is renewed by rain and melted snow that moves under the ground, a process called groundwater recharge. The percentages of summer versus winter precipitation that make it under the ground are expected to be different for a number of reasons including larger plant water use during the summer, and larger are ...[Read More]
Is research on ‘regional groundwater flow’ stagnant or still flowing?
Written by Brian Smerdon IAH regional groundwater flow commission In the early 1960’s József Tóth published seminal work on the concept of regional scale flow and nested flow systems. His work built on the “theory of groundwater motion” by M.K. Hubbard, and seemed to come along just at the right moment in history of hydrogeology. Armed with József Tóth’s work, the hydrogeologic community (geologis ...[Read More]
Water underground is flowing again….
After a joyous eight-month-long paternity leave, I am back being a professor during the day, and now being a dad at night. A little visual teaser of my time off is below – swimming with a sea turtle on the north shore of Kauai, Hawaii. On top of becoming a dad, I changed universities; I am now in Civil Engineering at University of Victoria. It is a rad new program focusing on sustainability ...[Read More]
Making guidelines for graduate students
I strive for effective, compassionate supervision and I clarify my goals, approach and expectations in my guidelines for graduate students (available here, from McGill’s best practices in supervision). As I wrote, most students enter a relationship with a thesis advisor without a clear idea of what they can expect so I compiled this handout to give you some idea of what I expect of you as st ...[Read More]