Cultivating a Culture of Entrepreneurial Mindset and Undergraduate Research

Todd Greene

Research Interests:

  • Clastic sedimentology and stratigraphy using outcrop, wells, and seismic data
  • Tuscan Formation:  sedimentology and aquifer characteristics of the Tuscan Formation, a 1500' thick volcaniclastic unit derived from the Mt. Yana volcanic center near Lake Almanor.
  • Deep-water sedimentation of the Great Valley Group near the San Luis Reservoir, central California, where boulder-conglomerate submarine canyon fill is beautifully exposed making it the highest energy and thickest conglomeratic unit known in the Great Valley Group!
  • Miocene strata in the southern onshore Eel River basin looking at cryptic bioturbation fabrics

CURE-E Course: Hydrogeology (ERTH 415), first introduced with CURE-E Fall 2022

Project Title: Going Down with Groundwater: Understanding the Fate of our most Precious Resource

Students will become familiar with publicly available datasets that describe the distribution of water wells in the North State. After choosing an area, students will familiarize themselves with the local structure of the aquifer, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), the local Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA), and the Groundwater Sustainability Plan (GSP) that will govern how groundwater is to be managed into the future. Using the available data, students will create novel contour maps of groundwater elevations relative to different depth zones of the aquifer to identify particular areas of concern (declining levels). By doing this, students will also be able to define data gaps to better address specific problems of groundwater declines.

Portrait of Todd Greene