interests and informal vita, Dr. Joe Donovan

Hi! I am a quantitative hydrogeologist with interests in groundwater flow and movement at a variety of scales. My interest in groundwater dated back to seeing hillside springs as a kid in northwestern PA. I saw a flowing well in western NY at the age of 13, and I was hooked. I learned what Geology was from Brewster Baldwin and Dave Folger at Middlebury College in the 70's, and after a brief stint milking cows in Vermont's Champlain Valley, returned to college at Penn State in 1973, where I met Dick Parizek (hooked once again).

I took an unusual path into academia. I worked for about 12 years in research and consulting in Montana and Western Canada, then returned for PhD work, briefly but productively at Auburn (Fred Molz's group) then at Penn State, where I worked on a problem of my own selection from eastern Montana, studying groundwater discharge into lakes from glacial outwash aquifers in a very hot dry climate. My committee at Penn State included Dick Parizek, Chris Duffy, Sue Brantley, and Art Rose, and I learned a lot of the things I had missed. From there I came to WVU in 1992.

At WVU we are "blessed" with a lot of mine-water problems. I have worked since arriving in and around Paul Ziemziewicz's group at the WV Water Research Institute, as well as retaining my interests in groundwater-lake-climate interaction as a sideline. We have studied groundwater movement in surface-mine spoil, flooding of below drainage underground mines, and free drainage from above drainage mines, as well as flow, recharge and geochemical phenomena that abound in these anthropogenic aquifers.

In 2002, I started the Hydrogeology Research Center, a lab for students/faculty from WVU Geology to work on applied research problems related to the mission of the Water Research Institute, on the Evansdale Campus. One of the first things we did was hire Dorothy Vesper, first as research faculty and then starting in 2004 as tenure track. Coincident with her arrival, HRC has branched into karst aquifer chemical and water supply issues in the eastern part of the state. Dorothy is an associate of the center, a frequent collaborator, and a really valued colleague in the hydro program at G/G. We also have hired Eb Werner, who has moved into a research adjunct role at HRC and holds the valuable position of geospatial expert.

The bird in the photo, by the way, is Beta Carotene, my 7 year old military macaw. He is from the suburbs of Cleveland; he enjoys pizza and linguine with clam sauce. His hobbies include tearing up and shredding thimbles, clothespins, and hard plastic artifacts. His favorite football team is the Nittany Lions ("We are.....). My hobbies include biking in a variety of forms, touring the American west, and tropical snorkeling/scuba. My favorite colleagues and students are all unusual.

If you want to contact me, use my cell phone....

The shirt in the photo is a near replica of the one I gave to our chair as a gift and he is as of yet still too shy to wear....