LONG-TERM INTEGRATION OF A HYDROGEOLOGY RESEARCH PROGRAM, UNDERGRADUATE GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION, AND OUTREACH WITH A GROUND-WATER MONITORING LABORATORY

A relatively low-cost ground-water monitoring laboratory at the University of Southern Indiana has proven successful in several aspects of an undergraduate geoscience program. The laboratory consists of a deep-shallow piezometer nest installed in the Pennsylvanian Inglefield Sandstone, and is housed within an equipped laboratory in the USI Science Center. While this laboratory is a primary component of the hydrogeology and environmental geology curriculum, it also has helped to synthesize stratigraphic, structural, geochemical, and quantitative skills for a large number of our students. The lab has been the centerpiece for generating nine complete research projects for eleven undergraduate geology students over just the past four years, resulting in eight published abstracts and two peer-reviewed manuscripts. For this integrated program, undergraduate geology students have generated over $4000 in internal and external funds, and research has been recognized with two college wide awards and an external (GSA) award. As a result of presentations and publications, academic and state and federal government researchers from the USA, Australia, and Canada, and private sector scientists and consultants have contacted our “research team” for data and interpretations of our findings. These inquiries provide remarkable “teachable moments” for the value of science, the dissemination of research results, and relevance to society. Current work in the laboratory includes continued monitoring, a stable isotope study, and the development of a ground-water monitoring system that will stream real-time graphical data displays to the web. Two pressure transducers, a barometric pressure sensor, and a datalogger are being configured with a real-time monitoring control web server. With current efforts in this new laboratory, our “real-time” audience will expand from geology students at the university to the local population and the larger scientific community. Outreach efforts have resulted in on-camera interviews with the local news media networks about the ground-water resource. The information generated and displayed on the internet will aid in understanding the dynamic behavior of the local domestic aquifer, and potentially provide relevant data for water-quality protection and land-use planning.