Satish Gupta Professor

The course is intended for undergraduate and graduate students in Soil, Water, and Climate; Water Resources; Institute of Technology; Environmental Sciences; and Natural Resources. The course covers the basic principle of water, solute, heat and gas transport in soils and the application of these principles to water quality problems. Some of the topics discussed in the class are: energy state of soil water, soil water retention characteristics, saturated and unsaturated hydraulic conductivities, Poiseuille and Darcy laws, law of mass conservation, water flow through uniform and layered soils, water infiltration equations, mechanisms of contaminant transport, contaminant adsorption and decay, transport of volatile organic compound, energy balance equation, soil thermal properties, steady and non-steady state heat flow, convective and diffusive gas fluxes, and concept of tortuosity. The lectures are supplemented with hands on laboratory exercises on methods of measuring field soil water content, soil matric potential, soil hydraulic conductivity, soil water diffusvity, breakthrough curves, air permeability, and thermal properties. Class time: 70% lectures, 30% laboratory

The course covers the principles of contaminant transport both in Percolate Solution and in Overland Flow. The course emphasizes transport of agricultural contaminants such as sediment, phosphorus, nitrate, and herbicides, and how management practices can minimize their transport. Topic discussions include Hydrologic cycle, Darcy?s Law, Soil and Contaminant Properties, Characterization of Contaminant Leaching, Macropores Impact on Contaminant Leaching, Travel Time, Distance to Travel, and Concentration Distribution, Vapor Phase Transport: Volatilization, Henry?s Law, Tillage Management Practices and their Impact on Nutrient Leaching, Types of Runoff, Methods of Estimating Runoff, Contaminant Transport in Runoff, Tillage and Crop Management Practices and their Impact on Runoff and Contaminant Losses, Watershed Factors affecting Runoff and Contaminant Losses, Instruments for Characterization of Runoff and Associated Contaminant, Plots vs. Paired Watershed Design Runoff Studies, Chemical Partitioning, Case Studies on Drainage Practices in the Minnesota River Basin and their Impact on Hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico and Sediment and Phosphorus Yield from the Minnesota River Basin, and its impact on Lake Pepin Water quality.