INTRODUCING THE OHIO FRACTURE FLOW WORKING GROUP, THEIR RESEARCH, EDUCATIONAL, AND OUTREACH EFFORTS

The Ohio Fracture Flow Working Group (OFFWG) which functions under the umbrella of the Ohio Academy of Science, was formed in 1993 as work on the modernization of Ohio's Soil Survey and fractured till research by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources coalesced on Ohio's Lake Plains. Coordinated research, education, and outreach efforts are undertaken by teams of scientists, engineers, planners, and legal experts who represent Federal, State, and local government agencies, universities, and the private sector. First convened to discover the significance of fractures in the fine-grained Lake Plain soils and underlying glacially related materials, the group has gone on to determine the who, what, when, where, why, how, how fast, and how long of fracture formation in Ohio. The research has application far beyond Ohio's borders both in North America and world wide. The group regularly interacts with other researchers in the US, Canada, and Europe, especially Denmark. A monograph of this research has been published as two special issues of the Ohio Journal of Science, June/Sept. 2000 and April 2006. It has been an underlying premise of the OFFWG that scientific discovery, by itself, is incomplete until its usefulness can be shared with the rest of humankind. Publication in the Ohio Journal was chosen because of its wide dissemination to public officials and local decision makers across Ohio, making it possible to rapidly distribute technical information to the people who need it.