Dr. Allen M. Shapiro

Dr. Allen M. Shapiro is a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Reston, Virginia.

His research has focused on characterizing ground-water flow and chemical transport in fractured rock. It has included investigations in various geologic settings, including fractured and dissolution-enhanced limestone, bedded sedimentary formations, and igneous and metamorphic rock.

Shapiro has authored papers on equipment design and field techniques, the interpretation of hydraulic and geochemical data, and theories of ground-water flow and chemical transport. His research has application to issues of societal importance, including water supply, ground-water contamination and restoration, waste isolation, and ground-water flow in the vicinity of engineered structures.

Shapiro earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and master's and Ph.D. degrees in civil and geological engineering from Princeton University.

Shapiro's lecture is titled "Recent Advances in Characterizing Ground Water Flow and Chemical Transport in Fractured Rock: From Cores to Kilometers."

The lecture discusses fractured rock aquifers, which provide water for domestic use, locations for isolating hazardous and toxic waste, and sites for foundations and infrastructure.

For these issues, the dimensions over which the characterization of ground water flow and chemical transport needs to be conducted can range from meters to kilometers. Critical to the evaluation of these problems is how formation properties may vary over increasingly larger dimensions. Theoretical methods of scaling formation properties may not be successful in their application to fractured rock, because of the structural complexity and extreme variability in the hydraulic properties of bedrock environments.

The influence of the physical dimensions of the problem on the magnitude of formation properties is viewed through the synthesis of laboratory studies, controlled field-scale experiments, and the interpretation of ambient ground water flow and the spatial distribution of dissolved constituents, gases and isotopes using ground water flow and chemical-transport modeling.