Welcome to Michigan State University’s hydrogeology research program! Here we evaluate human impacts on the water cycle through changes in climate and land use, as well as develop new methods to characterize the aquifers that store and transmit water supplies critical to human and ecological health. Also, we help develop methods to clean contaminated aquifers using emerging technologies such as bioremediation.

Our research group combines new models with high resolution field data to explore the physical, chemical, and ecological processes in natural and anthropogenically altered systems. Hydrogeology is an intrinsically multi-disciplinary field because of the critical role water plays in both human health and natural ecosystems. As a result, much of our research has been done in interdisciplinary teams that span areas of hydrogeology, geochemistry, microbiology, geophysics, civil engineering, and ecology.

We have developed different methods to evaluate spatial and temporal variations in groundwater recharge at scales that matter to both land use and water managers. We have also formed methods to predict ecological health of stream systems. This has been done by combining groundwater and ecological models that simulate stream temperature along with the transport and fate of nutrients and associated ecosystem stressors.

This is only a portion of who we are. Please, take a look around and get to know us here at the MSU Hydrogeology Department. Even more importantly,  get to know what we do!

Join the Hydrogeology Lab! We have several opportunities for graduate studies and postdoctoral researchers. Enthusiastic and motivated students who are intersted in starting an M.Sc. or Ph.D project in hydrogeology, hydrology, or hydrogeophysics are encouraged to apply. Funding is available through research grants, teaching assistantships, and fellowships. If you are intersted in working towards an advanced degree in the MSU geological sciences department, contact us, scroll through the group’s research pages, or find out more about the application process.

We are currently seeking 1 to 2 postdoctoral researchers interested in hydrologic modeling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hydrogeology News

  • 2012-04-13: Congratulations to Ryan Nagelkirk for winning a Student Poster Award in the Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences category at UURAF 2012! His project was titled: “Predicting the Impacts of Climate Change on Agricultural Yields in the Maumee River Watershed.”
  • 2012-03-27: A new post-doc, Agustin Brena, joins the Hydrogeology Lab
  • 2012-03-04: The project “Ecohydrologic Evaluation of Removing the Higgins Lake-Level Control Structure” was awarded a grant of $100,000.Funded by the Michigan DNR and the Higgins Lake Foundation, this project is analyzing the impact of removing the lake’s outlet control structure. Both Mike Wiley at the University of Michigan and Huron Pins Inc. were partners in the grant proposal.
  • 2012-02-15: Blaze Budd, a recent MSU graduate, joins the lab as a full-time research technologist. Blaze has been working at the Lab since Summer of 2011, and after a competitive external search was selected to fill this newly-created position.
  • 2011-12-10: At the 2011 AGU meeting in San Francisco, PhD student Mine Dogan and MS Students Kaya Diker and Emily Luscz presented their respective abstracts.
(News Archive)