Projects
The
Environmental and Water Studies Program encompasses both teaching and
research. The research program emphasizes several major areas of activity
and, as a general philosophy, promotes interdisciplinary projects. Several
projects, funded through Stanford's EPA-Sponsored Western
Region Hazardous Substance Research Center, are concerned with hazardous
substances in groundwater. Laboratory research is generally conducted
within the Environmental
Fluid Mechanics Laboratory and the Water Quality Control Laboratory.
Often faculty, staff and students from several specialty areas work
as a team on a given research endeavor. Student participation is a
vital element; at any one time, approximately forty graduate students,
representing all levels of degree candidacy, are contributing to one
or another of the approximately twenty-five funded research projects.
The size and diversity of the 
research
program provide numerous learning opportunities outside the classroom,
and stimulate a level of excitement for learning through research
that is rare. Student-faculty relations are relaxed and friendly.
Student initiative is encouraged in conceiving and conducting research,
as well as in communicating results. Current research includes
laboratory and field studies on the movement and fate of organic
and inorganic compounds in ground water and surface waters; physical,
chemical, and biological processes and mechanisms responsible for
the release, transport, transformation, and retention of contaminants;
contaminant control process es (especially the removal of trace
contaminants); mathematical modeling of important processes as
well as hydrologic phenomena; stochastic modeling of spatial variability
and uncertainty in ground water flow and transport; the development
of alternative energy sources; fundamental principles of physical,
chemical and biological treatment technologies for water, waste
water and solid wastes. In the environmental fluid mechanics area
current research is focused on stratified flows in lakes and reservoirs,
natural and forced convection flows in energy systems, energy and
mass transfer across the ocean-atmosphere interface, and simulation
of mesoscale phenomena in the oceans and surface layers of the
atmosphere. Other research includes hydrologic modeling, interaction
between surface water and ground water, and a comprehensive program
on the fundamentals of fluid transport, including turbulence and
mixing in natural water bodies and the mechanism of dispersion
in porous media flows. In the environmental planning and management
area current research is focused on implementation of environmental
policies and programs in developing countries and on the applications
of expert systems in operating water resources systems.
>Click here for list of currently
active externally funded research projects