William P. Anderson, Jr.

News and Updates 

• December 2023 - Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Ely Yancey, who successfully presented his Senior Honors Thesis on 06 December. His thesis, titled "Seasonal variations in riparian aquifer salt storage," looked at road salt contamination of two riparian aquifers in the Boone Creek watershed using field data collection from four stream-side monitoring wells and model methods. 

• May 2023 - Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Skye-Anne Tschoepe, who successfully presented her Senior Honors Thesis on 04 May. Her thesis, titled "Managing stormwater runoff in the High Country: An assessment of salt transport through a constructed wetland in Boone, NC," looked at the residence time, peak salinities, and the effectiveness of retention ponds in reducing the impact of road salt runoff. She is heading to Duke University to pursue a graduate degree in the Nicholas School of the Environment.

• December 2022 - Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Tyler Bland, who successfully presented her Senior Honors Thesis on 07 December. Her thesis, titled "Barrier-island mixing zone morphology with sea-level rise," looked at various sea-level projections and aquifer properties to predict changes in freshwater availability over the next 100 years on the coast of North Carolina. This work extended former student Nick Fiori's research by utilizing a more robust numerical model, which allowed for tidal oscillations in addition to sea-level rise. 

• October 2022 - The Stormwater Management Research Group's fourth paper, titled "Discrete and continuous measures of consequentiality," is accepted by the Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy. The manuscript was co-written by lead author Tanga Mohr, Peter Groothuis, and John Whitehead (Department of Economics), Kristan Cockerill (Department of Interdisciplinary Studies), Chuanhui Gu (Beijing Normal University) and Bill. 

• June 2022 - Congratulations to undergraduate researchers Tyler Bland and Katie Haven, who worked for the past eight months to produce a study for Watauga County titled "Inventory of Water-Supply Wells in Watauga County, North Carolina, 1964 - 2021." The study resulted in a report and a map of the same name, both co-authored by Bill and Lauren Andersen of the Department of Geography and Planning. Thanks to the Watauga County Board of Commissioners for funding this study.

• June 2022 - Congratulations to former undergraduate researcher Nick Fiori, whose reworking of his Senior Thesis was recently accepted by the journal Continental Shelf Research. Bill is a co-author on this publication. The paper is titled "The impact of sea-level rise on saltwater intrusion for barrier-island aquifers in North Carolina."

• April 2022 - Undergraduate researchers Tyler Bland, Katie Haven, and Skye-Anne Tschoepe presented posters, co-authored by Bill, at the 2022 ASU Research Day. Tyler's poster on coastal groundwater modeling looked at "Sea-level rise impacts on barrier-island aquifer mixing-zone morphology." Katie and Tyler collaborated on an effort funded by Watauga County titled "Groundwater resources of Watauga County." Skye-Anne continued her work on road salt impacts with "Chloride travel through a bioretention wetland system in Boone, NC: Data processing methods."

• October 2021 - Thanks to the Watauga County Board of Commissioners for funding a study of groundwater usage in Watauga County. This project involves two GES students including Tyler Bland, who is extracting well construction information from the North Carolina DEQ database, and Katie Haven, who is analyzing the data in GIS.

• June 2021 - Bill finished a nine-year period as Chair of Geological and Environmental Sciences at the end of June and returned to the regular faculty as of 01 July.

• June 2021 - Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Skye-Anne Tschoepe, who was awarded a research grant from Southeast Section of the Geological Society of America. Her grant, "An assessment of the impact of stormwater management practices on stream salt ion concentration in the South Fork New River watershed," will be used to purchase a conductivity probe to measure salt levels in a retention pond on the ASU campus.

• May 2021 - Bill is a co-author on a publication in Water. The paper, with first author and former undergraduate researcher Carly Maas, now at the University of Maryland, College Park, and co-author KM Cockerill of Appalachian State University, is titled "Stormwater management by accident: A conceptual study." The paper joins a long list of work on the Boone Creek watershed.

• April 2021 - Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Nick Fiori, who successfully presented his Senior Honors Thesis on 29 April. He is headed to the University of Michigan this fall for graduate school.

• April 2021 - Undergraduate researchers Skye-Anne Tschoepe and Nick Fiori both present virtual posters, co-authored by Bill, at the 2021 ASU Virtual Research Day. Skye-Anne's poster was titled "An assessment of the impact of stormwater management practices on salt ion concentration in an urban watershed," while Nick's was titled "The impact of sea-level rise on saltwater intrusion for coastal aquifers in North Carolina."

• April 2021 - The Stormwater Management Research Group's third paper, titled "Measuring the direct and indirect effect of scientific information on valuing stormwater management programs with a hybrid choice model," is accepted by Water Resource Research. The manuscript was co-written by lead author Peter Groothuis, Tanga Mohr, and John Whitehead (Department of Economics), Kristan Cockerill (Department of Interdisciplinary Studies), Chuanhui Gu (Beijing Normal University) and Bill.

• December 2020 - Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Skye-Anne Tschoepe, who was awarded a research grant from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, for her project "An assessment of the impact of stormwater management practices on stream salt ion concentration in the South Fork New River watershed." She is using the funds to install a monitoring well at Clawson-Burnley Park in Boone. She will also be working on an Undergraduate Research Assistantship from the Office of Student Research during the Spring 2021 semester.

• September 2020 - Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Skye-Anne Tschoepe, who was awarded a research grant from the ASU Office of Student Research for her project "An assessment of the impact of stormwater management practices on stream salt ion concentration in the South Fork New River watershed." She is using the funds to monitor water levels in the bioretention wetland at Clawson-Burnley Park in Boone.

• July 2020 - Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Skye-Anne Tschoepe, who was awarded a research grant from the ASU Honors College for her project "An assessment of stormwater management practices in the South Fork New River watershed." She is using the funds to monitor salinity in the bioretention wetland at Clawson-Burnley Park in Boone.

• May 2020 - Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Carly Maas, who successfully presented her Senior Honors Thesis on 30 May. She is headed to the University of Maryland this fall for graduate school.

• December 2019 - Undergraduate researcher Carly Maas presents "On the use of constructed wetlands in mitigate road-salt contamination in urban streams" in the Urban Ecohydrology: New Concepts, Observations, and Models technical session at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, CA. Bill and Emily Fedders, a former research student who is now a graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the Department of Geosciences, are co-authors.

• May 2019 - Congratulations to undergraduate researchers Emily Fedders and Aeon Russo, who both successfully presented their Senior Honors Theses on 02 May. They are headed to the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, respectively, this fall for graduate school. 

• April 2019 - The Stormwater Management Research Group's second paper, entitled "Modeling effects of low impact development on road salt transport at watershed scale," is accepted by the Journal of Hydrology. The manuscript was co-written by lead author Chuanhui Gu (Beijing Normal University), Kristan Cockerill (Department of Interdisciplinary Studies), Tanga Mohr, Pete Groothuis and John Whitehead (Department of Economics), Bill and two former/current students, Forest Shepherd and Aeon Russo, and is the culmination of several years of research. 

• April 2019 - A paper on Holocene sea-level variations in North Wales titled "Testing the Mid-Holocene relative sea-level highstand hypothesis in North Wales, United Kingdom," which Bill worked on with UK co-lead authors Greg Rushby (University of Sheffield) and Geoffrey Richards (University of York), as well as Roland Gehrels (University of York), Mark Bateman (University of Sheffield), and William Blake (Plymouth University), is accepted for publication in The Holocene.

• April 2019 - Congratulations to undergraduate researchers Emily Fedders, Aeon Russo, and Carly Maas on their achievements, which were recognized at the 40th Annual GES Awards Banquet. Emily won the Quantitative Geoscience Award, Distinguished Senior Award, Geology Academic Achievement Award, and the Outstanding Senior Geology Major Award, meaning that her name will be added to the plaque outside of the McKinney Geology Teaching Museum. Aeon also won a number of awards, including Fred and Barbara Webb Scholarship for International Field Camp, Distinguished Senior Award, and the Outstanding Senior in Environmental Science Award, which means that his name will also go on the plaque outside of the museum. Finally, Carly Maas also won a number of awards, including the biggest departmental scholarship, the Mark DeBroder Memorial Scholarship, a renewal of a GES Departmental Scholarship (URA), and nomination as a CAS Junior Marshal. Well done, Hydro Research Group students! 

• April 2019 - Undergraduate researcher Carly Maas wins a Student Presentation Award from the ASU Office of Student Research at the 2019 ASU Research Day for her poster titled "Augmented wetland in urban topography to mitigate salt contamination in Boone Creek, Boone, NC, USA." Bill and undergraduate researcher Emily Fedders were co-authors on the presentation.

• April 2019 - Undergraduate researchers Aeon Russo and Emily Fedders both present posters, co-authored by Bill, at the 2019 ASU Research Day. Aeon's poster is entitled "Modeling mitigation of road salt and stormwater by retrofitting low impact development in a mountainous, urban watershed," while Emily's is "Riparian salt storage and release along headwater streams in the New River Watershed." 

• March 2019 - Undergraduate researchers Carly Maas and Aeon Russo present posters at the Southeast Section meeting of the Geological Society of America in Charleston, SC. Carly's poster, co-authored by Bill and undergraduate researcher Emily Fedders, is titled "Augmented wetland in urban topography to mitigate salt contamination in Boone Creek, Boone, NC, USA." Aeon's poster, co-authored by Bill and Chuanhui Gu of Beijing Normal University, is titled "The problem of permeability: Modeling mitigation of road salt contamination and stormwater runoff by retrofitting low impact development in a mountainous, urban watershed."

• February 2019 - The Stormwater Management Research Group's first paper entitled "Managing stormwater runoff in Appalachia: What does the public think?," is published online in the Journal of Environmental Planning & Management. The manuscript was co-written by lead author Kristan Cockerill (Department of Interdisciplinary Studies), Tanga Mohr, Pete Groothuis and John Whitehead (Department of Economics), Chuanhui Gu (Beijing Normal University) and Bill and is the culmination of several years of research. 

• December 2018 - Undergraduate researcher Emily Fedders wins an Outstanding Student Presentation Award from AGU for her presentation "Streambank salt plum intrusion, concentration, and residence times along a dynamic, urban headwater stream: Investigation of development and remediation mechanisms" at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, DC. 

• December 2018 - Undergraduate researcher Emily Fedders presents "Streambank salt plume intrusion, concentration, and residence times along a dynamic, urban headwater stream: Investigation of development and remediation mechanisms" at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, DC. Bill and Dr. Kristan Cockerill of ASU's Department of Interdisciplinary Studies are co-authors.

• December 2018 - The Stormwater Management Research Group, comprising faculty from the Departments of Interdisciplinary Studies (Kristan Cockerill), Economics (Pete Groothuis, Tanga Mohr, and John Whitehead), and Geological and Environmental Sciences (Bill and former faculty member Chuanhui Gu), have their first paper accepted for publication. The paper, entitled "Managing stormwater runoff in Appalachia: What does the public think?," will be published by the Journal of Environmental Planning & Management.

• September 2018 - Bill receives the Appalachian State University College Excellence in Teaching Award as the runner-up for the University of North Carolina Board of Governor's Excellence in Teaching Award.

• April 2018 - Undergraduate researcher Carly Maas presents "Micro-wetland in urban topography to mitigate salt contamination in Boone Creek, Boone, NC, USA" at the Southeast Section Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Knoxville, TN. Bill and undergraduate researcher Emily Fedders are co-authors.

• December 2017 - Undergraduate researcher Emily Fedders presents "Modeling air temperature/water temperature relations along a small mountain stream under increasing urban influence" at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, LA.

• July 2017 - Bill is a co-author on a publication in the journal Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment. The paper, with first author CS Thaxton of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at ASU, co-author C Gu, Professor at Beijing Normal University, and co-authors B Stosic and T Stosic of the Departmento de Estatı´stica e Informa´tica at the Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco in Recife, Brasil, is titled "Detrended fluctuation analysis and entropy-complexity causality analysis of temperatures in an urbanized mountain stream."

• July 2017 - The Department of Geology officially became the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences on 01 July, in the process growing to a department of over 200 majors and adding two half-time faculty in Environmental Science. We are looking forward to a smooth transition to the new department during the 2017-18 academic year.

• April 2017 - Two of Bill's undergraduate research students, sophomore Emily Fedders and freshman Carly Maas, presented posters at the 20th Annual Celebration of Student Research and Creative Endeavors at the Plemmons Student Union on the ASU campus. Ms. Fedders reprised her SE GSA talk with a poster entitled "Effects of urbanization on air temperature/water temperature relationship in two small, mountain streams," while Ms. Maas gave her first ever presentation with a poster entitled "The relationship between specific conductivity and salinity in Boone Creek."

• March 2017 - Bill's sophomore undergraduate research student, Emily Fedders, gave a talk at the Southeast Section meeting of the Geological Society of America in Richmond, VA. Her talk, entitled "Effects of urbanization on air temperature/water temperature relationship in two small, mountain streams," was presented in the Hydrology and Hydrogeology in the Southeast: Processes, Problems, and Geologic Controls" technical session.

• March 2017 - Official approval was granted by the Provost to merge the Department of Geology with the Environmental Science Program to form the new Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences. We are excited about the merger and look forward to the official beginning of the new department on 01 July 2017.

• February 2017 - Bill is a co-author on a publication in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association. The paper, with first author KM Cockerill of Appalachian State University and co-authors and former undergraduate researchers Claire Harris, now at Illinois State University, and Kelli Straka, now at the University of Maine, Orono, is titled "Hot, salty water: A confluence of issues in managing stormwater runoff for urban streams." It is a follow-up to Cockerill and Anderson (2014).

• December 2016 - Bill is a co-author on a publication in the journal Environmental Geosciences by Eric Avalos, a former M.Sc. student at Illinois State University (ISU) whom Bill helped to advise while in the UK. The paper, "Two-dimensional seismic refraction tomography of a buried bedrock valley at Hallsands Beach, Devon, UK," is also co-authored by ISU colleagues DH Malone and EW Peterson and University of York colleague WR Gehrels.

• August 2016 - Bill attends the EcoStream Conference in Asheville, NC, and presents a poster, co-authored by ASU colleague Kristan Cockerill, titled "Stormwater management as a prescription for 'urban stream syndrome.'"

• May 2015 - Bill's undergraduate research student, Alex Beck, defends his Senior Thesis, which is entitled "Quantifying and describing groundwater discharge using streambed temperatures in Boone Creek."

• March 2015 - Bill's undergraduate research student, Kelli Straka, presents the poster Effects of road salt application on water quality in a mountainous headwater stream at the Southeast Section meeting of the Geological Society of America in Chattanooga, TN.

• February 2015 - AGU and Wiley publish the book Coastal Environments and Global Change, which is edited by Bill's former Plymouth University colleagues G. Masselink and W.R. Gehrels. Bill contributes "Chapter 6 - Coastal Groundwater."

• December 2014 - Bill's undergraduate student, Sonia Sanchez-Lohff, defends her Senior Thesis entitled "Analysis of El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signal strength on precipitation statistics, North Carolina, USA."

• September 2014 - ASU colleague Kristan Cockerill and Bill present "Avoid false images in restoring urban streams" at the EcoStream Conference in Charlotte, NC.

• May 2014 - Bill presents a poster co-authored by University of York, UK, colleague W.R. Gehrels at the European Geosciences Union Annual Meeting in Vienna, Austria. The poster is entitled Reconstructing Holocene sea-level change from coastal freshwater peat: A combined empirical and model-based approach.

• May 2014 - Bill and University of York, UK, colleague WR Gehrels publish "Reconstructing Holocene sea-level change from coastal freshwater peat: A combined empirical and model-based approach" in the journal Marine Geology.

• May 2014 - "Air-stream temperature correlation in forested and urban headwater streams in the Southern Appalachians" by Chuanhui Gu, Bill, and others, is published by the journal Hydrological Processes.

• March 2014 - Bill's undergraduate research student, Claire Harris, presents a talk entitled Temperature surge characteristics in a dynamic and urbanized headwater stream at the Southeast Section meeting of the Geological Society of America in Chattanooga, TN.

• October 2013 - University colleague Kristan Cockerill and Bill have a manuscript published by the Journal of the American Water Resources Association. The paper is entitled "Creating false images: Stream restoration in an urban setting."

• July 2013 - University of York colleague W.R. Gehrels and Bill co-author "Holocene sea-level reconstructions from freshwater backbarrier peat systems," which is presented by Dr. Gehrels at the All at Sea Conference at the University of York, UK.

• July 2013 - Bill is promoted to Professor of Geology and becomes the Chair of the Department of Geology.

• September 2012 - Departmental colleague Dr. Chuanhui Gu, Bill, and Federico Maggi of the University of Sydney, Australia, have a manuscript published by Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, entitled "Riparian biogeochemical hot moments induced by stream fluctuations."