Dr.  Michael Sukop (Florida International University)

The Enigmatic Biscayne Aquifer: Field, Laboratory, and Computational Approaches

Abstract: The Biscayne Aquifer of southeastern Florida supplies water to approximately 6 million people. It is a Pleistocene eogenetic carbonate karst unconfined aquifer characterized by meter-thick strata of dense networks of 2-cm burrow ichnofossil touching vugs and bedding plane conduits. The porosity of the burrowed zones can be 50% or more and the rock can be difficult or impossible to core. The large pores and high porosity likely result in non-Darcian flow under quite low gradients (>10-5) and contribute to extremely high hydraulic conductivities (Ks) that are challenging to quantify. While numerous arguments can be made against efforts to quantify a hydraulic conductivity of karstic rocks, enhanced understanding of the operative processes has fundamental value and may ultimately enable higher fidelity flow and transport modeling

Vita: Michael Sukop is professor of hydrogeology in the Department of Earth and Environment and the Institute of Environment at Florida International University in Miami, where he has taught and conducted research since 2003. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, a licensed professional geologist, and a certified hydrogeologist in California. He principally works on groundwater issues in Southeast Florida, including saltwater intrusion, septic systems, injection wells, and groundwater inundation. He has expertise in groundwater and solute transport modeling especially as they apply to seawater intrusion and the physics of the Biscayne Aquifer. He co-authored Version 4 of the popular SEAWAT model for seawater intrusion. He is author and co-author of 2 books on Lattice Boltzmann computational fluid dynamics modeling. Publications are listed here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xFIZLe4AAAAJ&hl=en

Invited by: Nadine Göppert