(CAREER) Career Development in Geological and Environmental Fluid Mechanics

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9701768 Manga This proposal describes long-term educational and related research activities in the area of geological and environmental fluid mechanics. A set of undergraduate courses will be developed to replace the standard piece-meal and phenomenological teaching of the subject with an inductive approach; classes will focus on a set of hands-on active-learning laboratory experiments which emphasize the process of discovery. A set of graduate classes will also be developed which focus on interdisciplinary collaborative research projects, with an emphasis on interactive learning and communication. A set of complementary research activities will address problems in hydrology, geodynamics and volcanology. This work will involve the same combination of theoretical and experimental approaches that will be used in the classroom. Specific research problems include studying the hydrology of spring-dominated streams in the Oregon Cascades (research will be integrated into a summer field school), characterizing the dynamics and rheolgy of bubby magmas and lavas, developing pore length-scale models of multiphase flow in porous materials in order to understand macroscopic properties of such flows, and relating the chemical evolution of the Earth's mantle to dynamic processes. Despite the wide range of these research problems, they all share a common feature, namely, the application of quantitative methods in fluid mechanics to problems in the geological and environmental sciences. It is anticipated that much of the material for lab exercises and graduate classes will be provided by these research problems, and that the development of lab exercises will in tern provide inspiration for new research directions.