John Selker

Professor
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Office: 541-737-6304
Fax: 541-737-2082

Gilmore Hall

Gilmore Hall 210

124 SW 26th Street

124 SW 26th Street
Corvallis, OR 97331
  • Hydrologic Instrumentation
  • Vadose Zone Hydrology
  • Groundwater Hydrology
  • Stochastic Hydrology
  • Contaminant Transport

Current Research: 

Lab experiments are conducted in three facilities, including many column and chamber experiments investigating transport, degradation, and retention of materials as a function of microbial, geologic, and hydrologic conditions.

Numerical research includes simulation of two and three-phase flow in porous media, focusing on the role of local heterogeneity upon fate and transport. Capillary barrier systems are included in field, lab, and numerical investigations.

Field experiments are ongoing in Oregon (atmospheric turbulence, river/aquifer exchange, artificial recharge of aquifers for habitat restoration), Oklahoma and Spain (soil moisture dynamics at 0.25-1,000 m scales), Senegal (automated remote monitoring of hydrologic variables), China (stream/aquifer interactions), Chile (hydrologic processes in landscapes with swelling soils), and Israel (internal waves and double-diffuse diffusion processes in hypersaline environments).

Dr. Selker's research includes development of instrumentation (passive capillary sampling devices for vadose-zone sampling, tensiometers and tension infiltrometers for site characterization, and use of LUX light-emitting microbes for continuous in-situ monitoring of microbial colonization and movement in unsaturated media, fiber optics for environmental monitoring using temperature, etc.), the characterization of vadose zone and hyporheic processes (capillary barriers, nutrient and pesticide loss from agricultural fields, groundwater/surface water interactions), and analytical/numerical representations of hydrological processes (Boussinesq equation, HYDRUS simulations, etc).

Curriculum Vitae: 
PDF icon cv_-_selker.pdf

Profile Field Tabs

At OSU
Affiliated with: 
Biological and Ecological Engineering
Career Links: 
CTEMPs DTS Center
Trans-African Hydro-Meterological Observatory
Openly Published Environmental Sensing Lab (OPEnS)
BEE 542 Vadose Zone Transport
Vadose Teaching Kits
Materials related to Lewis Press text “Vadose Zone Processes” by Selker, Keller and McCord, 1999
Chilean Soil Physics Course
Do you accept grad students?: 
I accept graduate students for the Crop and Soil Science Department
I accept graduate students for the Crop Science Program
I accept graduate students for the Soil Science Program
Student(s): 
Joseph Ellingson
Jordan Jimmie
Matthew Tippett-Vannini
Courses Taught: 
  • BEE 469 - Ecological Engineering Design I
  • BEE 470 - Ecological Engineering Design II
  • BEE 542 - Vadose Zone Transport
Biography

Dr. Selker, OSU professor of Biological and Ecological Engineering and co-Director of both CTEMPs.org and TAHMO.org, has worked USA, Kenya, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Canada, Chile, and England and carried out research in Chile, Ghana, Senegal, Israel, China, and 10 European countries.  His areas of expertise include electronic design irrigation and water systems, and development projects. Dr. Selker has been a professor in the department of Biological and Ecological Engineering at Oregon State University for 25 years focused on Water Resources Engineering, publishing 160 peer-reviewed articles. In 2013 he was elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and 2013 received the John Hem Award for Science and Technology from the American Groundwater Association.

My Publications

2016

Conference Paper

R. Hut, Selker, J., Weijs, S., Luxemburg, W., Wickert, A., Blume, T., Bamburger, J., Stoof, C., and Tauro, F., “7 years of MacGyver sessions at EGU and AGU: what happened?”, in EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts, 2016.
N. van de Giesen, Selker, J., Sayde, C., Thomas, C. K., Higgins, C. W., Schilperoort, B., Coenders-Gerrits, M., Luxemburg, W., Hilgersom, K., van Emmerik, T., and , “Distributed Temperature Sensing in the Atmosphere”, in EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts, 2016.

Journal Article

R. D. Stewart, Rupp, D. E., Najm, M. R. Abou, and Selker, J., “A Unified Model for Soil Shrinkage, Subsidence, and Cracking”, Vadose Zone Journal, vol. 15, 2016.
S. T. E. P. H. E. N. A. DRAKE, Huwald, H., Parlange, M. B., Selker, J., NOLIN, A. N. N. E. W., and Higgins, C. W., “Attenuation of wind-induced pressure perturbations in alpine snow”, Journal of Glaciology, pp. 1–10, 2016.
J. Benítez-Buelga, Rodriguez-Sinobas, L., Calvo, R. Sánchez, Gil-Rodriguez, M., Sayde, C., and Selker, J., “Calibration of soil moisture sensing with subsurface heated fiber optics using numerical simulation”, Water Resources Research, vol. 52, pp. 2985–2995, 2016.
K. Hilgersom, Van Emmerik, T. H. M., Solcerova, A., Berghuijs, W. R., Selker, J., and Van De Giesen, N., “Practical considerations for enhanced-resolution coil-wrapped Distributed Temperature Sensing”, 2016.
K. Hilgersom, Van Emmerik, T. H. M., Solcerova, A., Berghuijs, W. R., Selker, J., and Van de Giesen, N. C., “Practical considerations for enhanced-resolution coil-wrapped Distributed Temperature Sensing (discussion)”, Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems Discussions, 2016, 2016.
A. Arnon, Selker, J., and Lensky, N. G., “Thermohaline stratification and double diffusion diapycnal fluxes in the hypersaline Dead Sea”, Limnology and Oceanography, 2016.

2015

Conference Paper

J. Selker, “A new chapter in environmental sensing: The Open-Source Published Environmental Sensing (OPENS) laboratory”, in 2015 AGU Fall Meeting, 2015.
J. Selker, “Characterizing dynamic processes in the Critical Zone: Crazy new tools provide crazy new insights”, in 2015 AGU Fall Meeting, 2015.

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