A collaborative groundwater research effort led by researchers at The University of Alabama has been awarded $600,000 in supplemental funding from the National Science Foundation. The new funds will augment the Integrated Groundwater Management project, a $6 million, 4-year, Track-2 EPSCoR effort with investigators at Alabama A&M University and Alabama State University. They will also support a postdoctoral research fellow with a Ph.D. degree from a minority-serving institution. The IGM project is led by UA researchers Dr. Prabhakar Clement, Dr. Mukesh Kumar and Dr. Leigh Terry in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering.
With this additional funding, the IGM project team will build strategic partnerships with Dr. Pooja Preetha at Alabama A&M University and Dr. Uma Kannan at Alabama State University, which will help to further broaden the participation and workforce development in the groundwater area. This new funding will add two new partners to the interdisciplinary IGM project team that already has researchers from five other southeastern institutions including the University of Mississippi, Tuskegee University, Southern University, Auburn University and Louisiana State University. The team is developing computer models and simulation tools for harnessing big datasets to predict fine-scale recharge rates and groundwater storage levels in the southeastern region. The research outcomes of this project will include recharge maps for the region, an advanced understanding of groundwater recharge and storage processes and water table dynamics.