Minnesota Ground Water Association

MGWA 2021 Spring Conference

Groundwater Research:
What’s New and Useful?

April 27th, 2021, 8am – 5:00pm
Online Conference via Zoom

Agenda
Presentation Abstracts and Speaker Biographies

Description

The MGWA Spring Conference focuses on what is new in a wide variety of fields falling under the broad umbrella of groundwater research.  Emerging methods, new ideas about old problems, improved ways to monitor, manage, and remediate. A unifying theme is that the research has clear applied value. We are also taking advantage of “virtual circumstances” by including several speakers from outside of Minnesota who are grappling with many of the same groundwater issues we have here in our state.

Presentations

Morning Video

Peter Kang
University of Minnesota, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
From Mapping Injection Capacity of Aquifer Storage and Recovery Sites to Predicting Transport in Fractured Aquifers

additional resources:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEriQANhD70
www.wrc.umn.edu/banking-groundwater-managed-aquifer-recharge

Mindy Erickson
US Geological Survey, Upper Midwest Water Science Center
What have we learned from 60K arsenic measurements in new wells? A lot!

additional resource:
orcid.org/0000-0002-1117-2866
See especially the “works” section.

Jessi Meyer
University of Iowa, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Characterizing Overlapping Heterogeneities Controlling a Mixed Organic Contaminants Plume in Glacial Sediments

additional resources:
Steelman, C. M., Meyer, J. R., Wanner, P., Swanson, B. J., Conway-White, O., Parker, B. L. (2020). The importance of transects for characterizing aged organic contaminant plumes in groundwater. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, 235, doi.org/10.1016/j.jconhyd.2020.103728

Harvey, T. M., Arnaud, E., Meyer, J. R., Steelman, C. M., Parker, B. L. (2019). Characterizing scales of hydrogeological heterogeneity in ice-marginal sediments in Wisconsin, USA. Hydrogeology Journal, 27(6), 1949-1968, doi.org/10.1007/s10040-019-01978-1

Meyer, J. R., Parker, B. L., Cherry, J. A. (2014). Characteristics of high resolution hydraulic head profiles and vertical gradients in fractured sedimentary rocks. Journal of Hydrology, 517, 493-507, doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.05.050

Parker, B.L., Cherry, J.A., Swanson, B.J., 2006. A multilevel system for high-resolution monitoring in rotasonic boreholes. Ground Water Monitoring & Remediation, 26(4): 57-73, doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6592.2006.00107.x

Mid Morning Video

Colby Steelman
University of Waterloo, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Can Geophysics Really be Used to Understand Hydrogeological Problems?

additional resources:

Slide 2. ELOHA model example
dnr.wi.gov/topic/Groundwater/documents/GCC/Minutes/talkDiebel201311.pdf

Slide 4. Heat as a Ground Water Tracer
doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6584.2005.00052.x

Slide 9. Arduino and Temperature
create.arduino.cc/projecthub/TheGadgetBoy/ds18b20-digital-temperature-sensor-and-arduino-9cc806

Slide 10. Arduino and GPS
www.adafruit.com/product/1272

Slide 22 Seepage (See Don Rosenberry’s work)
www.usgs.gov/staff-profiles/donald-o-rosenberry

Slide 24. Temperature Flux Measurements
doi.org/10.1111/gwat.12369

John Nieber
University of Minnesota, Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering
The spatial and temporal distribution of total terrestrial water storage in the region extending from the Twin Cities to Moorhead, Minnesota

Afternoon Video

Crystal Ng
University of Minnesota, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
“First We Must Consider Manoomin”: Tribally Directed Collaborative Research on Wild Rice

Bonnie Keeler
University of Minnesota, Humphrey School of Public Affairs
The Social Costs of Groundwater Pollution

Late Afternoon Video

Jens Blotevogel
Colorado State University, Center for Contaminant Hydrology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Destructive Treatment Train Solutions for PFAS

additional resources:

Website: www.engr.colostate.edu/projects/cch/
Publications: scholar.google.com/citations?user=6ngZ6dYAAAAJ&hl=en
Research Gate: www.researchgate.net/profile/Jens-Blotevogel

Dave Hart
Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, University of Wisconsin
Low Cost and Easy Instrumentation for Groundwater/Surface Water Measurements

Randy Hunt
US Geological Survey, Upper Midwest Water Science Center
New Tools and Approaches for Groundwater Problems

additional resources:

Hunt, R.J., White, J.T., Duncan, L., Haugh, C., and  Doherty, J., 2021, Evaluating lower computational burden approaches for calibration of large environmental models. Groundwater doi.org/10.1111/gwat.13106.

Leaf, A.T., Fienen, M.N., and Reeves, H.W., 2021. SFRmaker and Linesink-Maker: Rapid Construction of Streamflow Routing Networks from Hydrography Data.  Groundwater doi.org/10.1111/gwat.13095.

Westenbroek, S.M., Engott, J.A., Kelson, V.A., and Hunt, R.J., 2018, SWB Version 2.0—A Soil-Water-Balance code for estimating net infiltration and other water-budget components: U.S. Geological Survey Techniques and Methods, book 6, chap. A59, 118 p. doi.org/10.3133/tm6A59.

White, J.T., Hunt, R.J., Fienen, M.N., and Doherty, J.E., 2020, Approaches to Highly Parameterized Inversion: PEST++ Version 5, a Software Suite for Parameter Estimation, Uncertainty Analysis, Management Optimization and Sensitivity Analysis: U.S. Geological Survey Techniques and Methods, Book 7, Section C, Chapter 26. 52 pages, dx.doi.org/10.3133/tm7C26.

Our group’s website:  www.usgs.gov/centers/umid-water/science/tc-chamberlin-modeling-center

Our group’s publication website:  https://www.usgs.gov/centers/umid-water/science/tc-chamberlin-modeling-center?qt-science_center_objects=3#qt-science_center_objects

MODFLOW 6 website:  www.usgs.gov/software/modflow-6-usgs-modular-hydrologic-model

PEST website:  www.pesthomepage.org

MT3D-USGS website: www.usgs.gov/software/mt3d-usgs-groundwater-solute-transport-simulator-modflow

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