Old problems, new approach: Applications of Ensemble-Tree Machine Learning to Hydrogeology

Dr. Kenneth Belitz is a Research Hydrologist in the Water Resources Mission Area of the United States Geological Survey (USGS). He received his B.A. in Geology from Binghamton University, and Ph.D. in hydrogeology from Stanford University in 1985.  His dissertation examined the evolution of large-scale groundwater flow in the Denver Basin under the direction of Dr. John Bredehoeft. Throughout his career, Ken has simultaneously pursued two fronts: improving the fundamental hydrogeologic framework of the conterminous U.S., and employing numerical models – and, most recently, machine learning – in novel ways to better understand regional-scale groundwater quality and to project our current understanding into unsampled space.