Behind the Scenes

Creating an exhibit that brings IIHR’s history to life

Early in 2020, IIHR and the Old Capitol Museum partnered to create a centennial exhibition that celebrates the institute’s important contributions to fluids-related research. Titled “A River Flowed Through It: Iowa’s Legacy in Fluid Mechanics,” the exhibit brings IIHR’s extraordinary history to life through artifacts, storytelling, and historical photos.

Unfortunately, about a month after the exhibit opened in February 2020, the coronavirus pandemic forced it to close again. Thankfully, the museum has agreed to keep the exhibit up through 2021 to allow more visitors to see it, either in person or online.

IIHR’s Carmen Langel, a former museum curator, provided the vision and led the exhibit creation process. But many others contributed to the final product. This photo essay offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the process and gives us a chance to thank everyone who contributed their talents and energy to this dynamic exhibit. Plus, it gives you a peek at the exhibit itself!

And don’t forget — the IIHR Centennial celebration will be rescheduled for fall 2022. Details to come. See you there!

Editor’s Note: We’d also like to thank our talented photographer Aneta Goska, who spent many hours scanning and organizing archival images for this exhibit. She doesn’t appear in any of the photos because she was taking them! Thanks to our amazing graphic designer, Robyn Hepker of Benson & Hepker Design, who contributed her professional design sense and artistic flair to the exhibit. Also, special thanks to Liz Crooks and her team at Pentacrest Museums, without whose support and tireless efforts the exhibit would not have been possible.

ABOVE: Curator Carmen Langel provided the vision and content for the exhibit, as well as countless hours of hands-on labor.

RIGHT: Two of “the Shop Guys,” Rick Saeugling (left) and Austin Brockman, put in many hours installing artifacts for the exhibit, including this vintage ship model.

See a virtual exhibit at pentacrestmuseums.uiowa.edu/river-flowed-through-it

ABOVE LEFT: Shop Manager Brandon Barquist’s endless humor, creativity, and organizational skills kept everyone happy and on task.

TOP: Tony Loeser and Jackie Stolze installed many photos, artifacts, and text panels – most of them straight and right side up.

ABOVE: Shop staff Rick Saeugling (left) and Robby Nace installed artifacts, including several of IIHR’s antique current meters.

TOP: Engineer Tony Loeser took a moment to channel his inner Jack Kennedy.

MIDDLE: IIHR Director Gabriele Villarini with an exhibit on IIHR’s directors.

BOTTOM: Graphic designer Robyn Hepker gave the exhibit its professional, polished look. Kids of all ages love to press the button that sends water flowing through the exhibit’s mini-models. IIHR’s Kate Giannini brought her boys, Nolan and Easton, to the exhibit opening. Here Nolan checks out an interactive mini dropshaft model designed and built in the IIHR shop.

Dr. Floyd Nagler photo from the exhibit. TOP: IIHR’s founding archivist Connie Mutel (left) congratulates curator Carmen Langel on the exhibit. Connie’s original research and historical writings are the backbone of the exhibit.

MIDDLE: Student assistants Margot Dick (left) and Lyndi Kiple conducted research, wrote descriptions, and helped install the exhibit, with guidance from Carmen Langel (right).

BOTTOM: Carmen Langel (left) with Director of Pentacrest Museums Liz Crooks. Crooks and her team provided many resources and built the temporary interior structures for the exhibit.

Illuminating the Subsurface

There’s a lot more going on underground than most of us imagine.

bY JaCQUELINE HaRTLING STOLZE

IIHR researcher Jessica Meyer is working to develop new insights on how groundwater moves and innovative ways to characterize its flow. Meyer, an assistant professor in the University of Iowa Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, says that understanding the flow of groundwater can be difficult.

“It’s challenging because you can’t observe any of it directly,” she says. But for the more than 110 million people in the United States who get their drinking water from groundwater sources, it’s important.

Although groundwater is an excellent source of clean, reliable drinking water, contamination is a problem. “We’ve certainly degraded that resource in many areas,” Meyer says. “In some systems, we’re very effective at remediating it. And in some systems, remediation is much more challenging.”

Meyer says her role is to take the first step, which is to understand how the water is moving and where the contaminants are. “You can’t clean up something if you don’t know where it is to begin with.” Geology is often very complex and essentially serves as the “plumbing” for groundwater. So, you are trying to understand how the water moves through the complex plumbing of the geology. To achieve these goals, Meyer is developing new tools and techniques that illuminate the subsurface to better understand groundwater flow and contaminant transport.

The process often begins with continuous core — long tubular samples of subsurface rock collected by a drill rig. “We can use that core to understand the geology and the water and contaminants moving through it,” Meyer says.

Meyer also takes measurements from the borehole, installing instruments called multilevels to turn one hole into many different wells. “Where typical studies have three data points, multi-levels provide 7 to 40. It provides new insights in terms of the kind of geological features that are influencing flow.”

Many times, the contamination occurred decades ago. “It’s not uncommon to be working at sites where the contamination went into the ground sometime prior to 1970, and you’re still working on it in 2020.

“Where typical studies have three data points, multi-levels provide 7 to 40. It provides new insights in terms of the kind of geological features that are influencing flow.”

— JESSICa MEYER, IIHR RESEaRCHER

“What is unfortunate is that we keep repeating that situation where we don’t necessarily think about these new compounds that we’re creating in terms of their environmental impacts long-term,” Meyer says.

She partners with scientists who design strategies to remediate groundwater contamination. One technique is to pump the water out and treat it at the surface. But Meyer says it’s often preferred to treat the water where it is – it can be more cost effective and doesn’t move the problem around. “But it all just gets harder to do when you have to do it in the subsurface,” she explains. “You don’t have as much control.” So, Meyer says, anytime we can take advantage of natural processes that help to clean up the contamination, it’s a plus.

For example, microbes present in aquifers can be efficient at remediating some contaminants so long as they have everything they need to “make a living.” One clean-up technique includes adding things to the subsurface to help along the natural degradation processes. “It gets pretty crazy,” Meyer says. “You might literally add bacteria that degrade the contaminants to the subsurface, or you might add the things that the bacteria need.” This could include oxygen or carbon, sometimes in the form of vegetable oil or molasses.

In other cases, Meyer says, remediation means building a permeable reactive barrier. “It’s almost like building a filter in the subsurface that we route the groundwater through. There’s a treatment process that happens within that filter as the water flows through it.”

Meyer would like all Iowans to be more aware of their groundwater and its importance. It’s something many of us don’t think about very often, even if we draw drinking water directly from the aquifer.

“The expectation is very much just, there’ll be water,” Meyer says. “If we’re talking about trying to manage a resource in a sustainable fashion, we need to know more about it. We need to understand it. Because you can’t manage what you don’t understand.”

IIHR’s Jessica Meyer loves fieldwork, especially with students!

LEFT: Meyer (left) demonstrates how to install a borehole liner.

MIDDLE: Showing students how to install a transducer string in a borehole (or, as Meyer likes to say, hydrogeologists doing what they do best, staring down a hole in the ground).

RIGHT: The distribution of aquifers and aquitards (i.e., hydrostratigraphy) strongly influences the path groundwater takes through the subsurface. Meyer’s research develops new ways to provide insight into the hydrostratigraphy to improve our understanding of groundwater flow and contaminant transport. Infographic adapted from Toth (1995)