Groundwater flow and contamination studies

Groundwater moves through soil and rock in ways that are difficult to observe directly, carrying dissolved contaminants along paths shaped by fractures, layering, and chemical reactions that vary across short distances. Understanding how water and pollutants travel underground is essential for protecting drinking water supplies, managing aquifer depletion, and predicting how long contamination persists after a spill or industrial leak. A central challenge is that standard models assume contaminants spread in smooth, predictable ways, but real subsurface geology is heterogeneous enough to produce "non-Fickian" transport — early arrivals and long tails in concentration that simple equations miss entirely. Researchers are currently working to improve how measurement techniques like hydraulic tomography and distributed temperature sensing can reveal hidden subsurface structure, and how that structure feeds into more accurate reactive transport models that account for the chemistry happening as water moves.

Works

92,595

Total citations

1,378,485

Keywords

Groundwater FlowTransport ModelingFractured Geological MediaHydraulic TomographySurface Water InteractionsNon-Fickian Transport