The role of Canadian research in advancing groundwater hydrology: Historical sketches from the past 75 years
Seminar
The early years of groundwater research in Canada were driven by the need to find water supplies and to evaluate the capacity of wells. The research focus shifted to the understanding of groundwater flow in drainage basins in the late 1950s and the 1960s, resulting in the establishment of a new conceptual framework and mathematical tools to describe groundwater flow systems in the context of topographic features and geological heterogeneity, which laid the foundation of contemporary understanding of groundwater and its connection with the ecosystem. This seminar highlights some of the major episodes that made fundamental contributions to groundwater hydrology.
Masaki Hayashi is a professor in the Department of Earth, Energy, and Environment at the University of Calgary. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in earth sciences from Waseda University and Chiba University, respectively, in Japan and his Ph.D. in earth sciences from the University of Waterloo. His main research interests are in the connection among groundwater, surface water, and atmospheric moisture in various environments ranging from the prairies to the mountains.