Groundwater

Groundwater Committee Purpose


The Groundwater Technical Committee is a planning group of groundwater professionals. Our mission is to promote and advance technical excellence in groundwater science by fostering collaboration, sharing knowledge and expertise among the members and others interested in the field. The technical committee is committed to promoting the highest standards of professionalism, ethics, and quality in all the work that we do.

The committee organizes session proposals and supports the planning efforts for the AGU Hydrology Section for topics related to groundwater research. Please contact the committee chair if you are interested in contributing to the committee or planning a session at the next meeting.

Groundwater Committee Description

The Groundwater Technical Committee encompasses fields within hydrology that deal with subsurface water, including physical, chemical, biological, and geological aspects. The science and its applications are diverse and include the quantity and quality of groundwater supply and its sustainability, maintenance of ecosystems, geologic processes such as heat flow, oil and gas production, and geochemical cycles. Groundwater is a vital, integral part of the hydrologic cycle and significantly affects water and solute dynamics in the terrestrial environment. We therefore take a holistic perspective to understand how groundwater interacts with surface waters, soils and the atmosphere to shape water and solute movement and fate in landscapes. The many connections between groundwater and other aspects of hydrologic and environmental systems promote interdisciplinary interactions with other AGU sections within Hydrology, including Ecohydrology, Hydrogeophysics, Water Quality, Surface Water, and Water and Society. The research methods deal with the special challenge of access to the subsurface and an always-incomplete knowledge of its properties. As such, we are closely linked to the Hydrologic Uncertainty Section. We also interact across AGU disciplines, with linkages to Biogeosciences, Global Environmental Change, Cryosphere, and Atmospheric Sciences.

Vital Open Questions in Groundwater

How can we improve the capability of groundwater flow and (reactive) transport models, including characterizing ubiquitous heterogeneity and quantifying uncertainty, moving beyond empirical to more mechanistic models, and taking advantage of computational advances?

What will be the impacts of climate change and human activities on groundwater into the future, including extreme events, sea-level rise, and considering frontier areas such as offshore and the arctic?

How can we synthesize processes across diverse spatial and temporal scales and through the groundwater-surface water continuum to understand large-scale groundwater systems and the role of groundwater in shaping and modulating water and solute fluxes from catchments?

AGU Fall Meeting - Session Proposals

Several sessions are proposed every year. The Hydrology Section Technical Committees assist with planning by organizing proposals for session topics to cover a broad range of topics and to avoid duplication.

Proposed Sessions for Planning of the 2025 AGU Fall Meeting Person who suggested the initial idea is listed.

Potential session proposal topics are:

  • Uncertainty quantification
  • Land subsidence
  • Drought resiliency and hydrogeophysics
  • Karst hydrology
  • Surface water/groundwater interactions
  • Radioactive waste disposal
  • Multiscale modeling Stable isotopes (novel analysis and modeling)
  • Machine learning in subsurface
  • Coastal hydrogeology and coupled human-hydrogeology
  • Contaminant remediation

Please contact the committee chair if you are interested in proposing a session. The deadline will be in April.

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The Committee

Name Institution E-mail
Bo Guo (Chair) University of Arizona boguo@arizona.edu
Tianyuan Zheng (Deputy Chair) Ocean University of China zhengtianyuan@ouc.edu.cn
Pania Newell (Past Chair) University of Utah Pania.Newell@utah.edu
Ilenia Battiato  Stanford University ibattiat@stanford.edu
Michael Cardiff University of Wisconsin - Madison cardiff@wisc.edu
Kenneth (K.C.) Carroll New Mexico State University kccarr@nmsu.edu
Kewei Chen Oak Ridge National Laboratory kchenhyd@outlook.com
Sidian Chen Stanford University sidianc@stanford.edu
Kyle Compare (Student Member) Florida State University kac15c@my.fsu.edu
Hang Deng Peking University hangdeng@pku.edu.cn
Jenny Druhan  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign jdruhan@illinois.edu
Jan Fleckenstein Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) jan.fleckenstein@ufz.de
Jesus Gomez-Velez Oak Ridge National Laboratory gomezvelezjd@ornl.gov
Zhilin Guo Southern University of Science and Technology guozl@sustech.edu.cn
Christine Hatch  University of Massachusetts, Amherst chatch@geo.umass.edu
Kristopher Kuhlman Sandia National Laboratory klkuhlm@sandia.gov
Dan Lu Oak Ridge National Laboratory lud1@ornl.gov
Bwalya Malama California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo bmalama@calpoly.edu
Holly Michael University of Delaware hmichael@udel.edu
Olivia Miller U.S. Geological Survey, Utah Water Science Center omiller@usgs.gov
Jeremy Patterson University of North Carolina Wilmington

pattersonjr@uncw.edu

Kevin Roche Boise State University kevinroche@boisestate.edu
Calla Schmidt University of San Francisco cischmidt@usfca.edu
Pin Shuai Utah State University pin.shuai@usu.edu
Alexandre Tartakovsky University of Illinois amt1998@illinois.edu
Adam S. Ward Oregon State University adam.ward@oregonstate.edu
Shujun Ye Nanjing University sjye@nju.edu.cn
Chen Zhu Indiana University chenzhu@iu.edu

 

Do you have ideas or comments for the Groundwater Technical Committee? Feel free to contact our chair, or our webmaster!