USGS’s Leahy to Speak at 2006 Ground Water Summit

U.S. Geological Survey Acting Director P. Patrick Leahy, Ph.D., will be the keynote speaker at the second annual Ground Water Summit to be held April 22 to 27 in San Antonio, Texas.

The Summit offers conference sessions and workshops as well as lectures, panel forums and field trips. It is sponsored by the Association of Ground Water Scientists and Engineers (AGWSE), a membership division of the National Ground Water Association (NGWA).

Concurrent sessions will be offered April 24, 25 and 26 on topics ranging from remediation strategy development, ground water monitoring and emerging contaminants to ground water in developing countries, ground water flow in fractured bedrock, hydrogeological processes in arid basins and more.

Educational offerings include, but are not limited to, hydrogeologic field methods, simulation/optimization modeling, karst workshops and hydrolysis.

The 2006 Henry Darcy Distinguished Lecturer Eileen Poeter, Ph.D., will present her lecture, “All Models Are Wrong: How Do We Know Which Are Useful?” Poeter will detail how the ground water profession today is searching for appropriate approaches to developing conceptual models, evaluating which are useful and describing the uncertainty associated with their predictions. She is a professor of geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines and director of the International Ground Water Modeling Center.

Also, the Darcy Forum will feature distinguished panelists addressing the question: “What information is needed to better define ground water resources and protect the quality of these resources for the future?”

Field trips to the San Antonio Water System and Edwards Aquifer sites will be offered, and an exhibit hall representing the ground water industry will be open to attendees.

Source: National Ground Water Association