Our department conducts a diverse range of water-related research with an emphasis on fundamental physical and chemical processes affecting water resources and environmental change.
Scientific interests of our students and faculty span water quantity and water quality; physical, chemical and biological systems; nanometer to global scales; and a wide range of study settings around the world.
Researchers
Sherilyn Fritz
Paleohydrology, Limnology
Sheri Fritz and her students work on modern and ancient lakes to understand both contemporary ecosystem processes and the history of landscapes and climate during the Quaternary. Current students are working on patterns of aquatic ecosystem development following deglaciation in Yellowstone National Park and on diatom evolution in large tropical lakes (Titicaca and Malawi). Other active projects in the Fritz lab include investigations of long-term environmental history in the Amazon Basin, the history of the Asian monsoon based on sediment cores from Thai lakes, and reconstructing drought history in the Great Plains.
Erin Haacker
Ground Water resources, modeling, data science
Erin Haacker and her students focus on groundwater supply for agriculture, particularly the impacts of irrigation pumping on aquifer levels. Members of the lab work with models of groundwater and surface water flow, and evaluate environmental impacts using numerical and statistical techniques, with a focus on data visualization, communication with farmers, and interdisciplinary research with social scientists.
Richard Kettler
Karrie Weber
Geomicrobiology, Aquatic Biogeochemistry