The UCSC Hydrogeology group has conducted studies on land and in the ocean, exploring, sampling, measuring, and experimenting across a wide range of settings and time scales. We have completed and are running projects involving: groundwater recharge, hydrothermal circulation, aquifer and crustal architecture, geothermal processes, surface water-groundwater interactions, and coupled flows of water-heat-solutes. This work often includes field work, laboratory tests and experiments, and geographic information systems and computer modeling.
We collaborate with other researchers and professionals at universities, national laboratories, resource and stewardship agencies, and in the private sector. In the last 10 years, research support has come from many sources, including: U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA: National Institutes of Food and Agriculture, National Resources Conservation Service), National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Synergy Program, San Francisco Bay Area Conservation Program), California Department of Conservation, California Coastal Conservancy, Santa Clara Valley Water, and the Water Foundation. We also raise funding to support students and their research directly through The Recharge Initiative.
You can read more about past and ongoing projects on these pages, organized by Research – Fresh Water and Research – Oceanographic (includes Ocean Worlds). Selected research highlights from recent years include:
(1) Discovery, documentation, and sampling of seafloor hydrothermal siphons, in multiple settings, where flows of cold ocean water are driven downward into the volcanic ocean crust, travel laterally and gather heat, then discharge into the overlying ocean at elevated temperatures and with distinct chemistry.
(2) Development and operation of a novel groundwater recharge incentive program called Recharge Net Metering, which compensates landowners and tenants for hosting projects on their property that collect excess stormwater and infiltrate it into underlying aquifers, helping to reduce overdraft and improve water quality.
(3) Completing coupled (fluid-heat) numerical simulations of seafloor, ridge-flank hydrothermal circulation at iconic settings such as the southern flank of the Costa Rica Rift, the eastern flank of the Juan de Fuca Ridge, the western flank of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and a cooled area on the Cocos Plate that hosts massive flows of low-temperature hydrothermal discharge. We recently extended this work to include low-gravity conditions appropriate for Ocean Worlds.
(4) Running a series of linked field and laboratory experiments, demonstrating that nutrient cycling and removal of contaminants can be stimulated by adding bioavailable carbon to shallow soils, thereby stimulating native soil microbes; this work was recently extended to operating managed recharge systems, showing that many such sites can provide opportunities to improve water quality.
These and other projects and accomplishments are described on pages for Research – Fresh Water and Research – Oceanographic (includes Ocean Worlds).
We are grateful for funding that has supported these and other studies:
