Environmental Sciences and Hydrology
In addition to the research described below, faculty in the Department of Geological Sciences are part of a NSF-IGERT program in Adaptive Management: Wise Use of Water, Wetlands, and Watersheds. This interdisciplinary program offers fellowships for PhD students (must be US citizens/residents). Please contact faculty members for information.
Mark Brenner is a limnologist and paleolimnologist with special interests in tropical and subtropical lakes and watersheds. He uses sediment cores from the bottoms of lakes to reconstruct the history of aquatic ecosystems and their drainage basins. Sediment profiles are excellent archives of past environmental conditions and preserve historical records of both long-term climate changes and anthropogenic impacts. His research is collaborative and multidisciplinary, often involving palynology, sediment geochemistry, mineralogy, animal microfossil analysis, radiometric dating, and archaeology. (Email; Web Page)
David Hodell, working in close collaboration with Mark Brenner and Jason Curtis, uses lake sediment cores to study how humans interact with their environment. This research encompasses a broad range of basic and applied research questions including: human impacts on aquatic ecosystems; deforestation and soil erosion in tropical environments; paleoclimate change including the frequency of extreme events; the role of climate change in the evolution of ancient civilizations; and paleorecords of global change. Current research projects include: 1.) Scientific Drilling in Lake Peten-Itza (Guatemala) (http://plaza.ufl.edu/hodell) to reconstruct late Pleistocene climate change during the glacial-to-interglacial cycles in the lowland Neotropics; 2.) Climate and Ecologic Change in Mesoamerica during the late Holocene and it implications for Maya Cultural Evolution. For an example of our research, see the article entitled "Mayan Meltdown" (http://rgp.ufl.edu/explore/v06n2/maya.html) in Florida Explore magazine. (Email; Web Page)
Jon Martin studies the hydrogeology and hydrochemistry of karst aquifers, particularly the physical and chemical interaction between surface and ground water and the exchange of water between pore spaces of matrix rocks and large conduit/cave systems. He uses natural chemical tracers such as major element concentrations, activity of radon, and strontium and oxygen isotopic compositions of the water to determine the timing and extent of mixing.
Another aspect of his research program focuses on submarine discharge of ground water to estuarine and near-shore marine waters. The research program is field-based and uses temporal and spatial variations in pore water chemistry to measure flow rates of the discharging ground water, as well as mechanisms driving flow of the water. In conjunction with the pore water solutes, he uses concentrations of naturally occurring chemical tracers in the surface water to determine the fluxes of water and nutrients to the surface waters.
Philip Neuhoff conducts combined field, theoretical and
experimental
studies of the relationship between fluid flow, chemical reactions, and
mass
transport/transfer. Much of this work focuses on the development of
aquifers in
flood basalts, where regionally extensive fluid flow has driven
extensive
mineralogic alteration and metal transport. Field studies of
glacially-dissected flood basalts in Iceland and Greenland, where
paleoaquifers
can be investigated in three dimensions, provide a database of aquifer
properties and mineral chemistry that serves to ground truth models of
reactive
fluid flow. (Email;
Web Page)
Liz Screaton studies the
interaction between conduit and matrix flow in the Floridan Aquifer.
She uses
monitoring of water levels and temperatures in karst windows and wells
to
determine hydraulic gradients, and subsurface flow velocities. (Email; Web Page)
Andy Zimmerman is an organic geochemist who studies organic matter-mineral-microbe relationships and human influences on organic matter preservation. (Email; Web Page)
University of Florida
Department of Geological Sciences
241 Williamson Hall
P.O. Box 112120
Gainesville, Florida 32611
Office: (352) 392-2231
Fax: (352) 392-9294
email: info@geology.ufl.edu
