Thomas Harter

Thomas Harter, Ph.D.; Nora S. Gustavsson Endowed Professorship for Groundwater Resources in Agriculture, Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources; University of California, Davis. Research Interests: Flow and transport processes in ground water and in the vadose zone; stochastic analysis of such processes in heterogeneous porous systems; numerical modeling; sustainable groundwater management; nonpoint source pollution of groundwater; assessment and remediation of ground water contamination; geostatistics. (see UCCE research). For a list of publications, check out Thomas' resume.

Short Bio:

Thomas Harter holds the Nora S. Gustavsson Endowed Professorship for Groundwater Resources in Agriculture at the University of California, Davis after serving as the Robert M. Hagan Endowed Chair for Water Policy and Management from 2007-2020. He has a joint appointment as Distinguished Professor and as Professor of Cooperative Extension at the Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources, where he has been leading the Hydrologic Sciences Graduate Group, and, as Associate Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences, is a team partner for the World Water Center. Dr. Harter received his BS and MS in Hydrology from the Universities of Freiburg and Stuttgart, Germany; and his PhD in Hydrology from the University of Arizona.  At UC Davis since 1995, he maintains a unique research and extension program in agricultural groundwater hydrology developing novel understanding and solutions to address issues at the nexus of groundwater, the unsaturated zone, soils, and agriculture. His research group and their outreach/extension support focus on nonpoint-source pollution of groundwater, sustainable groundwater management, groundwater and vadose zone modeling, groundwater resources evaluation under uncertainty, groundwater-surface water interaction, and contaminant transport. His team uses a range of numerical, statistical, and stochastic modeling approaches, often combined with field research, to evaluate the impacts of agriculture and human activity on groundwater flow and contaminant transport in complex aquifer and soil systems, and to support development of tools needed in agriculture and by decision- and policy makers to effectively address sustainable groundwater management and water quality issues in agricultural regions.  He is a member of the American Geophysical Union, and has been serving on the Board of Directors of the Groundwater Resources Association and of the Water Education Foundation.