ESRI-SC's capabilities related to government and private sector sponsored environmental studies and services include integrating geology, hydrology, and geochemistry with advanced computer applications for characterization of groundwater and surface water systems, water quality assessment, prediction of flow and solute transport, state-of-the-art environmental geophysics, and advanced geographic information systems development. Our applied research focuses on both site specific and regional scale projects that involve field, laboratory, and modeling activities. Further, ESRI-SC has extensive capabilities and experience conducting watershed studies, analyzing conservation efforts and best management practices, and developing user-oriented software solutions to a wide variety of natural resource problems.

ESRI-SC undertakes research projects in different fields:

• Groundwater Hydrology

• Environmental Geophysics

• Surface Water Hydrology

• Petroleum Geology

• GIS Applications and Database Development 

• Watershed Studies

• Conservation Education

• Computer Modeling

Hydrogeologic characterization via aquifer tests and single borehole tests is an area of growing capabil­ity within the environ­mental pro­gram at ESRI-SC. Computer-aided analy­ses of aquifer test data lead to un­derstanding the dynamics of ground­water flow in both porous and frac­tured satu­rated media. This under­standing facili­tates prediction of the be­havior of ground­water systems in terms of flow and trans­port of contami­nants.

Our water resources research program focuses on nonpoint source pollution assessments including mechanistic studies of the mobilization and transport of agricultural chemicals.  ESRI-SC also has recently completed development of a coupled simulation-optimization computer program for determining the optimum size of off-stream reservoirs to be used for water supply augmentation and water quality enhancement.

ESRI-SC's geographic information system (GIS) is used for managing large spatially-oriented databases and modeling diverse geographic data. In addition to pursuing contamination potential modeling, well­head protection area delineation, source water protection, and fa­cility sit­ing studies, GIS is used to develop large, diverse spatial databases.

Computer modeling of groundwater flow and solute transport also is a significant part of our en­viron­mental research capability. ESRI-SC maintains a wide array of hardware and software dedicated to modeling. In addi­tion to modeling applications we are conducting research on ad­vanced techniques of coupled simu­lation and op­timization for managing groundwater sys­tems for either water supply or environ­mental restoration.  ESRI-SC capability includes both analytical and numerical modeling using recognized computer codes such as the US Geo­logi­cal Survey code MOD­FLOW along with pre- and post-proc­essing software.  We also have experience in the application of geostatistical techniques to the evaluation of heteroge­neity and spatial vari­ability of flow and transport phenom­ena. ESRI-SC has state-of-the-art 3D visualization capabilities to display the results of field and model-derived data.

Structural analyses of rock fabrics and fracture systems provide data essential for highly refined computer modeling of groundwater flow, for geohazard susceptibility and risk assessment in conjunction with GIS, and for other environmental applications of geology.