Megan Smith: Earth scientist + Earth gardener

Contact info:

-Megan M. Smith
-@megan8617
-megan8617-at-gmail.com
-@greenmeggs.bsky.social -https://people.llnl.gov/smith447
-https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-smith-54925451

Professional

-Porous Media Group Leader: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), 2021-current
-Subsurface Transport Deputy Group Leader: LLNL, 2017-2021
-Staff Scientist: Geological, Hydrologic, and Environmental Sciences, LLNL, 2013-current

Education

-Ph.D., Hydrology, Colorado School of Mines
-M.S., Earth & Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley
-B.S., Geological Sciences, University of Oregon

About Me

I am an Earth scientist living in California and working at a national laboratory. Studying the reactivity of fluids in the subsurface has surprisingly kept me gainfully and mostly happily employed, working on topics like geological carbon storage, water-rock reaction kinetics, contaminant transport processes, geothermal energy operations, subsurface hydrogen storage and mining waste mineralization. I also recently earned my Master Gardener certification and am on a mission to reduce my water usage in and around my house, starting with killing my lawn and replacing most of it with native buckwheats.

Questions I sometimes think about and want to answer using Earth Data Science

How do you know when you’ve collected enough rock characterization data to have “good” statistics?

How long it will take me to drive to the beach from anywhere after X amount of climate-change-driven sea level rise?

Is it possible to visualize daily residential home energy usage on a county- or regional-scale basis?

What’s the best way to align two elevation datasets (with errors)?

How much total groundwater are Californians (and/or adjacent-state folks too) really pumping on an annual basis?

What are the primary orientations of all the faults and veins in the core drilled at the 4100’ level of the Homestake Mine?

What’s the most efficient way to analyze huge image datasets?

How to develop ball-and-stick flowtube models from XRCT image datasets with irregular-shaped porosity??)