6 Water Researchers Water management, access and treatment are key to the work Boone Pickens School of Geology faculty are doing to ensure communities have the resources to nourish the world for years to come. Dr. Todd Halihan, for example, has been conducting water research within the geosciences at OSU since 2000. His work centers on Earth’s subsurface, which is then applied to address groundwater issues. “If you’re really going to understand the subsurface, you need to know where [water] is going in, how it’s moving through and how it’s coming out because along the way, the water is going to undergo chemical, biological and physical changes,” Halihan said. “Sometimes those lead to good outcomes and sometimes bad outcomes.” In September 2023, Halihan was awarded $2 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to study the use and risks of enhanced aquifer recharge (EAR). Halihan and a team of researchers from OSU, the Oka’ Institute at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, and Texas State University in San Marcos are using EAR to improve groundwater availability and quality. College of Arts and Sciences Director of Outreach and BPSoG assistant professor Dr. Caitlin Barnes is also doing her part to improve groundwater access. She worked with Halihan, her CAS Outreach colleagues and the National Ground Water Association to head up NGWA University Powered by OSU. Now in its sixth year, NGWAU has provided training to new and continuing groundwater professionals in 24 states and six countries. Complementing the NGWAU workforce development program is Awesome Aquifer 360, a K-12 outreach program aimed at instilling an interest in earth sciences in the classroom. It has reached 387 schools, 42 states and more than 40,000 students. “If we don’t have people filling these positions, we’re going to lose a foundational infrastructure across the nation that helps us access clean water,” Barnes said. “We’ve been accessing water for a very long time, and it is shocking that we could lose that knowledge because no one is paying attention to how we get water from point A to point B.” Providing Training to Nourish the World spring.2025
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