Environmental and Water Resources

The focus of our research in environmental and water resources is on utilizing water resources in the most sustainable manner possible while providing reliable supplies of clean water throughout the world. Research is focused on a broad range of topics related to the sustainable supply of clean water, including protecting and improving the health of the rivers that act as water sources, optimizing the supply and transport of water to a community, improving the chemistry of point of use water treatment, understanding nanoparticle transport in groundwater, modeling contaminant transport in surface and subsurface waters, characterizing three-dimensional coherent structures in turbulent open channel flows, and creating algal biofuels from wastewater.

Professors in this area utilize computer modeling, laboratory research, and field sites that vary from rivers in Charlottesville to remote African communities. The Water Quality Lab, the Sustainable Rivers Lab, and the Virginia Environmentally Sustainable Technologies Lab are led by researchers in this area.