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SCOTT W. TYLER

Professor


 

Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering

 

MS 175

University of Nevada, Reno
(775) 784-6250

(775) 784-1953 fax
email: styler@unr.edu

 

 

 

 

 

EDUCATION

Ph.D. Hydrology/Hydrogeology, 1990, University of Nevada, Reno,

Dissertation Title: Fractal Applications to Soil Hydraulic Properties. 

 

M.S. Hydrology, 1983, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

Thesis Title: Field Results of Borehole Infiltration Tests.

 

B.S. Mechanical Engineering, 1978, University of Connecticut

                                                                                                                                                

Dr. Tyler’s  areas of focus span the wide range of arid region hydrology, with particular interest in bridging the gap between hydrogeology and soil physics in the discipline of  vadose zone hydrology. He is  a faculty member of the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering and adjunct faculty in Civil and Environmental Engineering, as well as participating in UNR interdisciplinary Graduate Program of Hydrologic Sciences (www.hydro.unr.edu). 

He is currently involved with a variety studies of moisture flux, groundwater recharge and energy balances in the vadose zone. His group is also a leader in the development of distributed fiber-optic temperature sensing. We have taken this technology to the study of soil moisture, aquatic stream and lake ecology, cave air circulation and the study of soil temperatures during forest fires.  We  have just launched the Centers for Transformative Environmental Monitoring Programs (CTEMPs, www.ctemps.org) in collaboration with Oregon State University, for the development and dissemination of distributed environmental temperature sensing. Other work includes the development of coupled solar energy/desalinization systems for water reclamation, modeling the limnology of complex aquatic ecosystems, the study of ground-water/brine interactions in terrestrial environments, the development of fundamental models of root water uptake and root physics, the reconstruction of paleoclimates from soil water chemistry, and reactive transport of contaminants in fractured, dual porosity unsaturated media and mine waste materials.

In addition, he has focused a portion of his energy towards educating U.S. students on the problems and issues faced by citizens of developing countries with respect to safe drinking water.  He has led volunteer graduate and undergraduate trips to Chile, Haiti and to west Africa to train local villagers in well drilling and well repair and is currently collaborating with colleagues at EPFL (http://eflum.epfl.ch/) in Switzerland on a multidisciplinary project in Burkina Faso.

Dr. Tyler is a fellow of the Geologic Society of America, the Soil Science Society of America and the Agronomy Society of America, and was the 1999 Distinguished Darcy Lecturer of the National Groundwater Association. He has just completed a 5 year term as editor of Water Resources Research, and currently serves on the editorial boards of Advances in Water Resources and the GSA Bulletin.  He is currently serving on the Board of Directors of the Consortium for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences (CUAHSI) and the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Challenges and Opportunities in the Hydrologic Sciences.

 

 

MOST RECENT PUBLICATIONS

 

Tyler, S.W., J.S. Selker, M.B. Hausner, C.E. Hatch, T. Torgersen and S. Schladow.2009. Environmental temperature sensing using Raman spectra DTS fiber optic methods. Water Resources Res. doi: 10.1029/2008WR007052.PDF version

Tyler, S.W., S. Burak, J. McNamara, A. Lamontagne, J. Selker and J. Dozier. 2008. Spatially distributed temperatures at the base of two mountain snowpacks measured with fiber-optic sensors. Journal of Glaciology. 54(187):673-679. PDF version

Webb, G., S. W. Tyler, D. Van Zyl, J. Collard, T. Halihan and T. Fenstemaker. 2008. Field scale analysis of flow mechanism in highly heterogeneous mining media. Vadose Zone Journal.7(2):899-908.  PDF version

Moffett, K., S. Tyler, T. Torgersen, M. Menon, J. Selker and S. Gorelick. 2008, Distributed temperature sensing of thermal trends and anomalies in the bed of an intertidal salt marsh and channel: The tidal thermal blanket effect. Environ. Science and Tech. 42(3); 671-676.  DOI: 10.1021/es071309m. PDF version

Assouline, S., S. Tyler, J. Tanny, S. Cohen, E. Bou-Zeid, G. Katul and M. Parlange. 2008. Evaporation from three water bodies of different size and climates under unstable conditions: Measurements and scaling analysis. Advances in Water Resources. 31(1):160-172. PDF version

Suarez, F., J. Bachmann, J.F. Munoz, C. Ortiz, S. Tyler, C. Alister and M. Kogan. 2007. Transport of Simazine in unsaturated sandy soils and prediction of leaching under field conditions. Journ. of Contaminant Hydrology 94(3/4):166-177.PDF version

Tyler, S.W., J. Munoz and W. Wood. 2006. The response of playa and sabkha hydraulics and mineralogy to climate forcing. Groundwater. Vol. 44(3):329-339.  PDF version

llangasekare, Tissa; Tyler, Scott W.; Clement, T. Prabhakar; Villholth, Karen G.; Perera, A. P. G. R. L.; Obeysekera, Jayantha; Gunatilaka, Ananda; Panabokke, C. R.; Hyndman, David W.; Cunningham, Kevin J.; Kaluarachchi, Jagath J.; Yeh, William W.-G.; van Genuchten, Martinus T.; Jensen, Karsten., 2006. Impacts of the 2004 tsunami on groundwater resources in Sri Lanka, Water Resour. Res, 42, W05201, doi:10.1029/2006WR004876. PDF Version

Kampf, S.K. and  S. W. Tyler, 2006 Spatial characterization of evaporation and land surface energy budgets at the Salar de Atacama using ASTER image classification. Advances in Water Resources. Vol. 29(2):336-354. PDF version 

Albright, W.H., C. H. Benson, G. W. Gee, T. Abichou, S. W. Tyler, and S. A. Rock. 2006. Field Performance of Three Compacted Clay Landfill Covers .Vadose Zone J. 2006 5: 1157-1171. PDF version