Alicia Wilson, Nickles Badger (USC Geology Undergrad), Eugene Karabanov (USC visiting faculty), and Andrea Hougham working on a vibracore. (Eugene is working, anyway.)

Research Tools and Equipment

For coastal work we own or have access to field equipment suitable for installation and long-term monitoring (pressure-temperature-salinity) of shallow piezometers. In the lab our primary tools are sophisticated groundwater modeling computer programs.  We use programs like SUTRA for some projects, but otherwise we rely on research codes like COMPACT (Wilson and Garven, 1999), which can simulate variable-density fluid flow, heat transport, solute transport, sediment compaction, and simple geochemical reactions.  We also use RST2D (Raffensperger, 1996), which simulates variable-density fluid flow, heat transport, and reactive solute transport.  RST2D has been modified to include kinetic reactions as well as equilibrium reactions (Wilson et al., 2001), and we are in the process of adding reactive capabilities to COMPACT. We are also building new models with COMSOL. The lab is equipped with powerful PCs running Windows and Linux and associated digitizing and scanning equipment.

Wilson Hydrogeology Lab

301 EWSC
Lab phone: (803) 777-6969

Current Graduate Students:  Ipsita Gupta, Andrea Hougham

Current and recent undergrad projects and assistants: Ashley Shull, April Rodgers, Kevin Nichols, Nickles Badger, Will Huff, Curtis Gebhard

        

Simulations from Melissa Thornton’s M.S.

Ipsita and Andrea inexplicably not at their computers.