Kamini Singha, Ph.D. - US grants

EAR-0725019
Duffy
THE SUSQUEHANNA/SHALE HILLS CRITICAL ZONE OBSERVATORY
Intellectual Merit: The surface of the earth comprises a weathering engine or mill that solubilizes and disaggregates rock to form regolith. Over the long term, the rates of weathering and erosion combine to control the evolution of landscapes and help to define the access, rates of motion, and time scales of water and energy within the Critical Zone (CZ). Despite the importance of these processes, we are generally unable to quantitatively predict the rates or mechanisms by which regolith forms or how it controls water flow. Understanding these rates is of particular importance due to the rapid rates of change of the CZ in response to anthropogenic and climate perturbation. Here we propose a Critical Zone Observatory dedicated to developing this understanding for one of the most common lithologies on earth.
Our Critical Zone Observatory site, the focus of National Science Foundation-supported research since the 1970s, provides long term datasets for hydrological response that will be augmented here by new geochemical, geomorphological, ecological, and soils datasets. The observatory is a small catchment in central Pennsylvania (hereafter termed the Susquehanna/Shale Hills Observatory or SSHO) on Rose Hill Shale. As a tectonically quiescent and relatively pristine watershed, Shale Hills presents the opportunity to investigate the rates and mechanisms of regolith formation on a simple but ubiquitous bedrock lithology. The regolith at the SSHO has experienced at least two potentially significant perturbations in the geologically recent past: a climatic perturbation from peri-glacial to modern conditions and a biologic perturbation from anthropogenic clearing of forests during colonial occupation. The magnitude of these perturbations and their influence on regolith generation afford an opportunity to assess the time scales of response of soil production to both long-term climate change and human activity.
Broader Impacts: To predict the creation, evolution, and structure of regolith as a function of the geochemical, hydrologic, biologic, and geomorphologic processes in our forested landscape, we have created an interdisciplinary team of 14 scientists from 8 universities, 1 federal agency, and 2 national laboratories. This team will coordinate not only the SSHO but also six satellite sites where we will initiate similar but less extensive investigations to explore the effect of climate and composition on shale weathering. Among these, Alabama A&M and University of Puerto Rico are minority-serving institutions that will facilitate the involvement of under-represented groups in Critical Zone science. Scientists and REU students from each satellite site (eighteen students over three years) will work closely with members of the Penn State team on a variety of activities ranging from geochemical analyses of soil and bedrock samples to measurement of soil moisture with onsite detectors. The observational data and model capabilities developed in the proposed effort will be made available through web-services for both time series data and geospatial data through the CZEN cyberinfrastructure initiative. Development of the SSHO on-line information system will be supported by ongoing NSF observatory and cyberinfrastructure grants. It is our vision that the SSHO will become an exemplar for Critical Zone observational and modeling science that will attract many additional investigators from the broader community to test ideas, techniques, and predictions.

Soluble contaminants or tracers migrate through natural systems defining concentration versus time curves that vary between sample locations. Often, these curves show long tails that are not described by the processes of advection and dispersion. Whether we need to predict evolution of natural systems or the quality of our water supply, we must be able to quantitatively predict such tailing behavior. The reliability of contaminant transport predictions depends on a good understanding of in-situ flow and transport processes; however, large contrasts, complex connectivity, and extreme spatial localization of hydraulic properties combine with sparse data to limit our understanding of fundamental processes and properties controlling field-scale hydrologic behavior. This research looks to help answer the following question: Under what scenarios can
long tailing of concentration histories be described by commonly used advective-dispersive models given hydraulic conductivity heterogeneity, versus the need for bicontinuum models with local diffusion between mobile and less mobile porosity domains?

Bicontinuum mass transfer has been used to explain complex transport behavior in some environments, but experimental verification of this process is problematic because geochemical samples only represent the mobile component of the pore space, making determination of processes in the immobile domain impossible. Recently, the PI and colleagues have demonstrated that electrical geophysical techniques provide a
means of verifying the occurrence of bicontinuum transport and estimating the parameters which control these processes by sampling the total pore space, rather than just the mobile domain. While these results show promise for using remotely sensed data for directly estimating hydrologic parameters controlling mass transfer?immobile
porosity and mass-transfer rate?in situ, determining when dual-domain systems control transport is unclear. In particular, it is not clear what scales of mass transfer rates (or diffusion lengths) and immobile porosity fractions can be practically investigated with this approach, or heterogeneity controls on transport. The objectives of this research are to determine 1) whether solutes locally diffuse between mobile and less mobile zones at three field sites of differing geology, and 2) how mass transfer processes within and between heterogeneous zones affect our macroscopic view of solute transport in the field.

Tied to this research is the development of an integrated hydrogeophysics summer course, where undergraduate researchers will combine field experimentation, in-class instruction, and numerical modeling to develop and test hypotheses regarding the processes controlling transport under different regimes. This field camp will be run in collaboration with three HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) partnered with Penn State and the Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP), a summer-long internship that engages students from minority groups and institutions in cutting-edge
research at majority institutions of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.

This Workshop will build a research infrastructure that will link US scientists and Ghanaian experts from academia as well as the health and mining sectors to discuss a resilience approach to environmental and human health issues related to small-scale gold mining. Currently, roughly 500,000 men and women are employed in small-scale mining in Ghana, most of whom operate illegally. These miners are often accused of environmentally destructive practices with potentially disastrous health impacts. We intend to contextualize the complex socio-cultural, environmental, and topographical spaces of contamination and propose innovative solutions for mitigation.
During a four-day science workshop to be held in March 2008 in Tarkwa, Ghana, we propose to assemble 32 US and African scientists (including 13 students), all of whom are interested or currently involved in mining and health investigations, and four small-scale miners. The US scientists are affiliated with the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Texas in Dallas, the University of North Texas, and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and represent the fields of geosciences, geography, ecology, medicine, sociology, and engineering. The Ghanaian participants represent the University of Ghana, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and the University of Mines and Technology as well as the mining community, the Dunkwa District Hospital, the Minerals Commission, and two NGOs. R. Amankwah (Co-PI) will be the main organizer on the Ghanaian side, responsible mainly for preparing and hosting the workshop, while all other listed Co-Pls will assist in the, collection of literature, selection of study sites, and the preparation of subsequent research proposals. By bringing together these multiple groups of experts, we intend to address the current disconnect in the scientific debate between socio-economic drivers of small-scale gold mining (poverty and lack of alternative livelihoods), the technological strategies to reduce environmental contamination and degradation, and educational efforts to improve health conditions among mining populations.
The specific objectives of the workshop are as follows: 1) bring together, for the first time, diverse researchers and professionals to assess the state-of-the-art knowledge and knowledge gaps on human and environmental health in the small-scale gold sector; 2) identify key interdisciplinary themes and develop an innovative research agenda; 3) draft the outline of three distinct research and educational proposals to be later submitted to NSF; and 4) develop a preliminary agenda for capacity building in mining communities to put research results into practice.

Intellectual merit: In the African small-scale mining sector, toxic contamination, environmental degradation, disease, poverty, and risk mitigation have not been assessed from a holistic perspective. We propose an innovative ecosystem approach to human health that, based on the understanding of resilience in complex social-ecological systems, integrates health priorities into other key elements of poor and marginalized people's lives. Through our workshop and the subsequent research proposals, we intend to advance interdisciplinary knowledge on the impact of changes in biological, physical, social, economic, and political environments upon human health. By framing bioenvironmental health and mining from a resilience perspective, we expect to gain insights into why and how women and men gold miners persist in an apparently high-risk environment.

Broader impacts: By inviting a diverse set of participants, including junior and senior faculty, undergraduate, master's, and PhD students, and American and Ghanaian researchers, our proposed workshop and emerging research infrastructure will intensify professional exchange and expertise between two continents. Students, researchers, and mining and health professionals will engage in collective learning activities throughout the workshop that promote the integration of research and education. Novel concepts will be incorporated into academic curriculum development, teaching, and outreach. Ultimately, this new research platform is expected to contribute to improved well-being among marginalized mining populations in Ghana and other African countries.

ABSTRACT
"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."
Hyporheic zones and riparian zones play important roles in catchment-scale budgets of nutrients, heat, and energy. Significant research has been conducted on the biogeochemical and hydrologic functions of both hyporheic and riparian zones, though often in isolation from each other. Here, we seek to determine how dynamic valley-bottom hydrology is controlled by valley morphology and gradient, and how this in turn influences hyporheic exchange throughout summer baseflow recession in headwater catchments. We pose the following research questions:
1) How do down-valley and cross-valley vectors of subsurface flow change through seasonal baseflow recession?
2) How are these changes controlled by valley-scale morphology and gradient?
3) How spatially consistent are the patterns of down- and cross-valley vectors?
4) How does the extent of hyporheic exchange change during seasonal baseflow recession?
We will address these questions by combining field methods, groundwater flow and transport modeling, stream solute transport modeling, and integrated analyses of tracer data and geophysical surveys of stream tracer distribution in the subsurface. This research will significantly enhance our ability to predict and quantify the hydrology of stream-groundwater exchange.
We propose to conduct a workshop at the Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory to bring together hydrologists and geophysicists to define the cutting edge and future directions of hydrogeophysics in stream-groundwater interactions. We will additionally train two graduate students and two undergraduate students in hydrology, groundwater modeling, geophysics, and solute transport. We will actively recruit from under-represented applicants to Penn State.

0841901
Kirby

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

This grant supports acquisition of ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment, a real-time kinematic GPS system, 3-D visualization software and field hardened notebook computers. The equipment will support research and research training in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State University that will benefit from the capability of GPR to image the near subsurface. Specific equipment to be purchased includes a GPR system with multiple borehole antennas (at frequencies of 50, 100 and 200 MHz) to support stratigraphic, tectonic and hydrologic studies and a high frequency pulsed GPR system to be deployed for imaging the thickness, internal structure and basal contacts of glaciers. The equipment will support a range of PI and student research including studies of the dynamics of rivers of ice draining the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, studies of the movement of solutes through ground water systems, morphodynamic investigations of meandering and braided river systems, studies of pedogenesis and hill slope processes, and paleoseismological investigations of buried faults near active plate margins. In particular, research use of the GPR systems for study of the response of polar continental ice sheets to climate change is of profound and timely societal interest. GPR, in conjunction with seismic reflection techniques, offers the means to image glacial structure at high resolution to hundreds of meters and to probe the structure and nature of underlying deposits that serve to lubricate or slow glacial advance toward the sea. Students trained in GPR operation, data analysis and interpretation are well poised to gain employment in a host of civil engineering and environmental consulting fields that increasingly rely on GPR as a tool for near subsurface imaging.

Buruli ulcer (BU) is one of the most neglected but treatable diseases in tropical countries. It is considered to be a disease of the poor because of its debilitating and disfiguring skin alterations that often create social stigmas. BU typically occurs near water bodies, especially near stagnant water, such as slow-flowing rivers, ponds, swamps, and lakes. In Ghana, more than 11,000 cases have been counted since 1993, the second highest rate in Africa. The large majority of BU cases are reported for children and women. While the clinical dimensions of the development of the ulcer on the human skin are well understood, the natural reservoir, activation, and transmission of the bacterium remain unknown, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to label BU as an "intriguing disease." Several studies have confirmed the linkage between BU and disturbed environments, especially in association with flooding. Environmental disturbances and landscape modifications may play a major role in the creation of stagnant water and the occurrence of the disease, but little research has focused on the linkages between human-related land disturbance or fragmentation and BU outbreaks. This interdisciplinary research project will focus on Ghana as a case study and will explore role of environmental change and the emergence of BU at multiple temporal and spatial scales. The investigators hypothesize that BU outbreaks are triggered by increased systems vulnerability resulting from exogenous disturbance in the form of more extreme and frequent rainfall events and slow drivers of landscape change due to deforestation, agriculture, and mining activities. Project objectives are to enhance basic understanding of the role and types of land disturbance on BU outbreak; identify overlooked yet potentially critical nonlinearities and surprises resulting from the interaction of human and natural factors on the landscape and subsequent disease emergence; add to the ongoing debate on BU reservoirs, host(s), and transmission; and contribute to the growing body of literature and scientific discourse regarding emerging infectious disease and ecological change, with emphasis on climatic extremes. The investigators will use an innovative combination of environmental sampling, interviews and surveys, participatory mapping activities, and complex systems modeling to unravel the complexities of BU.

This project will have significant implications for the understanding of resilience in coupled human-environmental systems. It will address new and important questions regarding complex, emerging diseases in changing landscapes, with particular emphasis on types and scales of interactions, positive feedbacks, thresholds, and non-linear dynamics. The research will provide health benefits for the study populations in Ghana and education and training opportunities in the U.S. and Ghana. The U.S. investigators will work closely with researchers and practitioners at Ghanaian partner institutions (University of Mines and Technology, Kwameh Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, University of Ghana, Minerals Commission, and Ghana Health Services). Through its educational component involving cross-cultural, international "K-12 sister-schools," the project will demonstrate how human-modified landscapes and disease patterns are interconnected in both the United States and Africa. This project is supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program.

A Hydrogeophysics workshop will be held 8-11 July 2012 at the Boise State University. The conference will address current hydrogeophysical approaches to predicting and/or monitoring hydrologic properties and processes in both the saturated and unsaturated zones, at scales ranging from centimeters to watersheds. The conference will also include ?homework sessions? that will enable attendees to independently analyze a shared dataset, which will provide insight into uncertainty in solutions, differences in processing algorithms, as well as variations in rock physics assumptions. The workshop will enable the hydrogeophysics community to come together to think creatively about new ways to share resources (people, equipment, access to field sites) to advance the science. Discussion will be organized into a white paper designed to provide a statement of the current state of the art. The meeting is open and students are encouraged to attend.