Scott J Ikard
I am a licensed Professional Engineer with thirteen years of professional research and project engineering experience in geophysics, hydrogeology, and hydrology, with auxiliary experiences in fluvial geomorphology, civil, and geotechnical engineering.
Currently, I am a Hydrologist in the Geophysics unit of the United States Geological Survey's Texas Water Science Center, in Austin, Texas. I plan and perform applied research studies and projects that broadly encompass proposals development, geophysical and hydrologic survey planning, instrumentation, data acquisition, data processing, and publication of surface, waterborne, airborne, and borehole hydrogeophysical data. The goals of my applied work frequently include delineation and correlation of aquifer systems, geophysical assessments of local and regional surface and ground water exchange-flow patterns, quantification and uncertainty analysis of hydraulic and geophysical properties of the vadose zone, confined and unconfined aquifers throughout the world.
United States Geological Survey. GS1315-11 Hydrologist/Geophysicist. Austin, Texas 06/2014 – Present
- Oversight, site selection, planning and preparation, and coordination of groundwater conservation districts, river authorities, municipal and government agencies, and public stakeholders in research-drilling and near-surface hydrogeophysical projects.
- Planning, implementation, and oversight of waterborne and land-based geophysical field surveys using time and frequency domain electromagnetics, self-potential mapping, electric resistance tomography, seismic refraction, dilution gaging, water-level monitoring, differential global positioning systems, Calibrated surface and borehole geophysical and hydrologic instruments, and performed troubleshooting of logging instruments and data acquisition systems in the field.
- Performed field acquisition, pre-processing, inversion, and post-processing of vertical electrical soundings and transient electromagnetic soundings, as well as surface self-potential and electrical resistivity tomography data, to map alluvial and deep confined aquifers and produce conceptual hydro-stratigraphic models for groundwater flow modeling.
- Developed data-processing codes and algorithms for (a) automated hydro-stratigraphic interpretation and geo-electric correlations from geophysical well logs and drillers logs, (b) automated baseflow separation and recession analysis, (c) digital signal processing, (d) groundwater flow modeling, particle tracking, parameter estimation and uncertainty analysis, (e) 2D and 3D forward and inverse modeling of self-potential and DC resistivity data using finite elements, finite differences, and linear filter theory.
- Published innovative, novel research in peer-reviewed journals and USGS reports.
