Laboratory Technician Support: Expanding Capabilities for Experimental Hydrogeophysics Research and Outreach

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This award will fund an experimental hydrogeophysics technician to support a number of current NSF-funded projects; help maintain a large field equipment pool; build capacity in a tank and wind-tunnel facility at Colorado School of Mines that is open to the community; and provide a number of outreach opportunities, from high school students to professionals. By hiring a full-time technician, equipment will be better maintained, data will be published in consistent, quality formats; and will allow additional outreach opportunities in geophysical methods that are currently not feasible. All of these tasks should provide opportunities for more effective and efficient data collection, method dissemination, and outreach.The technician will support a series of currently funded and pending NSF proposals, ranging in topic from exploring connections between trees and groundwater fluxes to the impact of wood on streamflow and ecosystem services to mapping subsurface flowpaths in a variety of systems. In each of these projects, the research group provides the primary geophysics support, making the intensity of data collection and equipment management high. By applying geophysics to less commonly studied earth systems for geophysical investigation, like trees and streams, the group has been able to answer some fundamental questions about coupled processes in the earth. Importantly, geophysical data production is large when considering time-lapse processes common in hydrologic studies, which makes development of thoughtful, efficient ways to manage and publish data imperative, something a technician can help with. The role of the technician will be to: 1) maintain and calibrate geophysical equipment; 2) develop best-practices protocol development that will be available for dissemination; 3) organize data management and publication; 4) support field geophysics outreach, and 5) support training and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students on advanced geophysical methods. Expected technical capabilities of the selected technician include the ability to operate and maintain a series of geophysical field equipment, including electrical, electromagnetic, and seismic gear as well as downhole wireline logging equipment, among others.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.