The Birdsall-Dreiss lecture, scheduled for September 20, has been cancelled due to a speaker conflict.

The Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment will host F. Ed Harvey, Ph.D, the 2017 Birdsall-Dreiss lecturer, at 3 p.m. Wednesday, September 20, as part of its GGGeo colloquium series. Harvey is supervisory hydrologist and chief of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) Water Resources Division (WRD) located in Fort Collins, Colorado. His talk, “Water Resource Stewardship in the U.S. National Park Service,” is free and open to the public and will be held in room 210, Moulton Hall. The Birdsall-Dreiss Lectureship, sponsored by the Geological Society of America, is one of the most prestigious, international lectureships in the field of hydrogeology.

Harvey’s lecture on Wednesday will use examples from parks across the United States and explore the process of how parks identify water resource needs, issues, and concerns, and how they develop and apply scientific information needed to make water resource management decisions.

Harvey received a bachelor’s degree in geology/geophysics from Olivet Nazarene University in 1986, a master’s degree in hydrogeochemistry from Purdue University in 1990, and his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada in 1996. Subsequently, he accepted a position at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), where he was a research hydrogeologist with the Conservation and Survey Division (the state’s geologic and water survey) and a professor of hydrologic sciences with the School of Natural Resources. AT UNL, his research focused on groundwater dependent ecosystems, groundwater-surface interaction, and using geochemical and isotope applications methods to characterize regional groundwater flow systems.

In 2013, Harvey left his academic position to assume his current role as NP WRD chief. WRD provides Park Service-wide leadership for the preservation, protection, and management of the water and aquatic resources; offers technical assistance to all of the country’s more than 400 national park units; leads and supports development of NPS water resource initiatives, guidelines, and policies; and provides disciplinary and policy support to the Washington, D.C., offices and Park Service leadership staff.