Thomas Harter, Ph.D.; Robert M. Hagan Endowed Chair in Water Management and Policy. Hydrology Program - Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources; University of California, Davis; Research Interests: Flow and transport processes in ground water and in the vadose zone; stochastic analysis of such processes in heterogeneous porous systems; numerical modeling; assessment and remediation of ground water contamination; nonpoint source pollution of ground water; geostatistics. (see UCCE research). For a list of publications, check out Thomas' resume.

Short Bio: Thomas Harter, Ph.D., received a B.S. in hydrology from the Universities of Freiburg, Germany and a M.S. in hydrology from the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in hydrology (with emphasis on subsurface hydrology) at the University of Arizona, where he became the 1991 Harshbarger fellow for outstanding research in subsurface flow and transport modeling. In 1995, he joined the faculty at the Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources, University of California, Davis. His research focuses on nonpoint-source pollution of groundwater, groundwater resources evaluation under uncertainty, groundwater modeling, and contaminant transport. Dr. Harter's research group has done extensive modeling, laboratory, and field work to evaluate the impacts of agriculture and human activity on groundwater flow and contaminant transport in complex aquifer and soil systems. In 2007, Dr. Harter was appointed Robert M. Hagan Endowed Chair in Water Management and Policy.

Niall McCarten; Graduate Student Researcher, LAWR, UC Davis. Niall McCarten is studying the hydrology of vernal pool wetlands in the Central Valley of California.  Vernal pools are important seasonal wetlands that have become very rare in California due to land use conversions over the past 100 years.  His research focuses on gathering multi-scale field data on variably saturated soil using pressure transducers and soil moisture sensors.  In addition, his is conducting soil profile analysis and chemical tracer experiments to derive hydraulic conductivity to calculate the rates and precipitation dependent amounts of groundwater flow through a vernal pool watershed.  The field data are being used as initial conditions for hydrological modeling using HYDRUS.  His research is derived, in part, from over 15 years of ecological research on vernal pool plants which became limited in terms of developing predictive models of plant hydroperiods due to the lack surface and subsurface hydrology data. Results of the hydrological research is finding the physical correlation between precipitation and soil wetting process is linked at time scales of a few minutes causing rapid increases in the water table and the appearance of surface water in pool basins.  In addition, the contribution of the surrounding watershed appears to be very important and reduction in that watershed area could reduce hydrological functioning of the vernal pools.  The ecohydrology component of his research is identifying plant species that have very narrow elevation zones which correlate with similarly narrow ranges in hydroperiod.  This type of data will be very useful in the designation of plant indicator species for hydrological functions of different types of vernal pools.