Dr. Erich Hester, associate professor at Virginia Tech, specializes in environmental and water resources engineering. During his Fulbright year, Dr. Erich Hester cooperated with his host, Angela Lin, and discovered opening up the floodplain can be effective to help break down medical chemicals in the river. Integrating floodplain management into the existing infrastructures can potentially improve the efficiency of the water treatment system.
"Floodplain restoration is popular to address excess nutrients, but its ability to enhance photolysis of emerging contaminants has not been evaluated. We used the numerical model MIKE-21 to simulate photolysis reactions within the inundated surface water of restored floodplains along a mid-size river."
Read the paper Effect of Floodplain Restoration on Photolytic Removal of Pharmaceuticals @ACS Publications
Dr. Erich Hester
Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Virginia
