Rachel Housego

My research program focuses on studying how water moves in the subsurface. Groundwater provides an essential freshwater resource for communities, agriculture and industry, and supports the health of the ecohydrological system.  I study the interactions between surface water forcings (e.g. waves, currents, tides, surge), climate forcings, morphological evolution, and groundwater dynamics which act on a broad range of spatial and temporal scales throughout the hydrosphere. Understanding these feedbacks and mechanisms is essential for predicting water resource availability and environmental hazards such as flooding, erosion and pollutant transport. I use both in situ field measurements (surface water, groundwater, atmospheric and geotechnical) and numerical models simulating groundwater flow and transport (MODFLOW, HydroGeoSphere) to evaluate these processes in complex environments from the mountains to the coasts.