Instructors

Dr. Arden D. Davis, Professor Emeritus of Geological Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Dr. Davis has been a steward in protecting the groundwater resources of South Dakota. As a groundwater hydrologist and geological engineering consultant, Dr. Davis has been engaged in numerous projects involving groundwater contamination, aquifer evaluation, low-level radioactive waste site evaluation, spring-flow measurements, and mine site development throughout his career. Among his many contributions, Dr. Davis worked with the cities of Rapid City, Hill City, and Custer in characterizing and quantifying aquifer vulnerability in these developing areas, ultimately designing a unique approach for quantifying aquifer vulnerability in karst areas such as the Black Hills uplift. Dr. Davis also served as an expert witness regarding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in South Dakota, and he assisted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources as a member of a technical advisory team concerning the Gilt Edge Superfund Site. Dr. Davis has also shared his expertise relating to groundwater contamination and remediation at various locations throughout the state of South Dakota, including the Williams Pipeline/Hayward School site in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Mark T. Anderson is an adjunct professor of Geological Engineering and Instructor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He is the former Director of the Dakota Water Science Center (both ND and SD) for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and former Chairman of the Yellowstone River Compact Commission. He has served in a number of leadership positions during his career: Associate Director of the Arizona Water Science Center; Senior Policy Analyst in the Executive Office of the President working with the President’s Science Advisor; Acting Director of the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center; Nevada Water Science Center and Acting Director of the Earth Resources Observations and Science (EROS) Center near Sioux Falls. EROS is the largest science center in the USGS and specializes in satellite-based remote sensing. The DWSC conducts basic hydrologic data collection (about 130 streamflow and other gages) and scientific investigations, such as climate modeling, groundwater modeling, paleoflood hydrology and anthropogenic organic compounds in drinking water. He has published papers on ground-water overdraft, storage depletion and land subsidence of Arizona basin fill aquifers. He worked on flow and sediment transport problems on the Colorado River in The Grand Canyon and directed aspects of the first controlled-flood experiment on a large river, the Colorado River below Glen Canyon Dam. In 1996. Mark was awarded the Secretary of Interior’s “Unit Award for Excellence in Service” as a member of the USGS scientific team that conducted the experiment. Mark is the author of a USGS Circular (1261) entitled: “Water Availability for the Western United States—Key Scientific Challenges”.

Dr. Liangping Li, an associate professor of Geological Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, has key expertise in the area of stochastic hydrogeology, uncertainty quantification, geostatistical inverse modeling, machine learning, and data assimilation for hydrological models. He investigated a range of upscaling methods for groundwater flow and transport modeling and proved their applications at the Macrodispersion experiment site, Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi, developed a novel inverse method using multiple-point geostatistics, applied machine learning for aquifer characterization with preferred flow paths, and co-authored a highly cited review paper for inverse methods in hydrogeology. He served as an associate editor for Hydrogeology journal, Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment journal, and journal of Hydrologic Engineering. He has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers in the field of hydrogeology. His research has been funded by National Science Foundation, U.S. Geological Survey, and NASA EPSCoR.