Susa H. Stonedahl, Ph.D. | Professional Bio.
I am an assistant professor at St. Ambrose University in the Engineering and Physics
department.
I obtained my masters and doctoratal degree in Environmental Engineering and Sciences from Northwestern University under the direction of Prof. Aaron I. Packman. The specific focus of my dissertation is on better understanding hyporheic exchange in small sandy streams through model development and data collection. Education
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Research Related Art
Hyporheic Board Game: click here to find out more about game.
Hyporheic Pumpkin!
Longitudinal stream slice with bedforms and flow paths
My research involves the amount of time water spends in the subsurface including bars.
The Hyporheic Song
Into the subsurface water will flow
How long will it stay there? Where will it go?
How much water will go in and out?
These are questions we wonder about.
In natural systems water's never alone
It brings along friends to the hyporheic zone
Pollutants deposit and nutrients deplete
Here is where ground and surface waters meet
To study these systems first we create
A flume model we can extrapolate
To rivers and streams of different scales
To test if the model succeeds or fails!
We use the Darcy equation and the porosity
To calculate the pore water velocity
We track particles through these velocity fields
And examine the results our model yields
The subsurface journey is full of delays
Traversing meanders can take many days
But a trip through a bedform is fast indeed
An hour or so could be all you need
Into the subsurface water will flow
How long will it stay there? Where will it go?
How much water will go in and out?
These are questions we wonder about.