Faculty Focus

CGRER has welcomed two new members since September, 1998. They promise to broaden CGRER's skills and relevance in manners described below.

Michelle Scherer came to the University of Iowa's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in September, 1998, after completing her doctoral work at the Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology in Portland. Prior to that, Michelle worked as an Environmental Systems Analyst for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. As part of her doctoral work, Michelle examined the chemistry of using iron metal to clean up contaminated groundwater. This innovative technique, now used at over a hundred field sites around the world, involves the construction of a permeable "iron wall" - a trench that is filled with granular iron, strategically placed to intercept the flow of groundwater. The iron in the trench transforms many organic pollutants (and some inorganic pollutants also), converting them to less toxic or less mobile chemicals. Michelle evaluated the physical and chemical steps that are controlling the rates of transformation in these "iron walls."

She is now expanding her work to examine the reactivity of iron minerals with both organic and inorganic pollutants. This process occurs naturally in some mineral-bearing soils, and may be contributing to the natural attenuation of pollutants. If Michelle's efforts confirm that iron minerals are sufficiently successful and rapid in their reactions with pollutants, these minerals too might find their way into commercial use. She believes that her membership in CGRER will aid this and similar efforts by furthering her interdisciplinary collaboration with faculty members in the chemistry department who, like Michelle, are using molecular techniques to study reactions at mineral-water interfaces.

Raymond Arritt, an associate professor of agricultural meteorology in Iowa State University's Department of Agronomy, has been at that institution for six years. Prior to that, he completed his doctoral and post-doctoral work at Colorado State University and taught at the University of Kansas. Much of Ray's research concerns atmosphere-earth surface interplay and its effect on regional weather and climate. More specifically, he examines how processes such as soil moisture, transpiration by plants, and snowmelt interact with the atmosphere to shape climate. He may, for example, explore how atmospheric conditions determine the speed of snowmelt, which in turn determines the probability of spring flooding. Although much of Ray's work focuses on the development and use of numerical models, he also does observational work on regional wind patterns and storm systems.

Ray has just received a CGRER seed grant to further his work on the validity of regional climate models.(see Seeds page) He also received a CGRER seed grant in 1994 to evaluate the impact of potential greenhouse gas increases on Great Plains precipitation patterns.

Ray already collaborates with ISU's CGRER members Gene Takle and Bill Gutowski. He hopes that his membership in CGRER will spur similar collaborations with researchers at the University of Iowa, such as Greg Carmichael and Allen Bradley, who also study regional climate and hydrology.