Hermance, John

John F Hermance

Professor Emeritus of Geological Sciences

Overview

I received my Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 1967 and served as a Research Associate at MIT working on the Apollo Applications Program Lunar Lander for one year before joining the Brown Faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1968. I have 30+ years experience as a professor, developing a range of courses and electronic mediated instructional materials in theoretical geophysics, hydrology and risk assessment of natural hazards. I am a consultant to industry, public groups, private individuals and the legal profession in a variety of lead and support roles. My major research interests include: environmental geophysics and hydrology, particularly those activities related to groundwater and watershed studies. I have directed numerous geophysical field projects in Iceland, the Azores, the Yukon, Canada, major volcanic centers in the western United States, and the Northeast U.S. My current research focusses on the hydoclimate conditions in the African East Sahel.

Brown Affiliations

Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences

Research Areas

Research

Research Overview

My research is in the area of environmental geophysics and hydrology. I advocate preserving the subsurface environment through non-invasive investigations using methods such as ground penetrating radar, magnetic surveys, and DC resistivity. This offers cost-effective means for obtaining a quantitative, spatially representative overview of subsurface conditions as a prelude to exploratory drilling and test cores; which if not done properly could enormously complicate site remediation and threaten the natural environment.

Remote sensing of land cover and rainfall from satellites in conjunction with surface based hydroclimatological measurements provide an effective means of monitoring fluctuations in Earth's climate from the scale of days to many decades.

Research Statement

My major research interests currently focus on environmental geophysics and hydrology, particularly those activities related to groundwater and watershed studies in the Northeast U.S. Over the past three decades, I have directed numerous geophysical field projects in Iceland, the Azores, the Yukon, Canada, major volcanic centers in the western United States, and the northeastern United States.

My current geophysical/hydrological field investigations include developing collaborations with academic, industry and private sector partners to address the following research issues:

Site studies assessing presence and potential migration of hazardous materials, including chemicals, solvents and fuels, among others;

Development of new geophysical procedures applied to groundwater investigations, as well as to delineating subsurface infrastructure: pipelines, underground storage tanks, foundations, etc.

Watershed characterization, groundwater studies, aquifer characterization, & subsurface flow modeling;

Development of adaptive signal processing techniques to extract temporal and spatial vegetation signatures from remote sensing data;

Application of satellite remotes sensing techniques and geographical information systems (GIS) analysis to characterize spatial and tempral rainfall distributions in semi-arid areas. Out current focus area involves collaborating with Sudan scientists in the East Sahel of Africa.

Funded Research

Present Activity: Private sector support.

Scholarly Work

Hermance, John F., Robert W. Jacob and Rabi N. Bohidar, 2010, Drawing on Seismic and GPR Techniques for Applying a Composite Moveout Correction to a Shallow Mixed Reflection/Refraction GPR Phase, Submitted to Soc Explor Geophys Special Volume; Rick Miller (Editor).

Hermance, John F., 2010, Magnetotelluric Interpretation (Invited article), Submitted to: Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics, Harsh Gupta (Editor).

Hermance, John F., Robert W. Jacob, Bethany A. Bradley and John F. Mustard, 2007, Extracting Phenological Signals from Multi-Year AVHRR NDVI Time Series: Framework for Applying High-Order Annual Splines with Roughness Damping; IEEE Transactions of Geoscience and Remote Sensing, , Vol. 45, No. 10, pp. 3264-3276.

Hermance, John F., 2007, Stabilizing High-Order, Non-Classical Harmonic Analysis of NDVI Data for Average Annual Models by Damping Model Roughness, International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol. 28, No. 12, pp. 2801-281.

Bradley,Bethany, Robert Jacob, John F. Hermance and John Mustard, 2007, A curve fitting procedure to derive inter-annual phenologies from time series of noisy satellite NDVI data; Remote Sensing of Environment, Vol. 106, Issue 2, pp. 137-145.

Jacob, R.W. and Hermance, J.F., 2005, Random and non-random uncertainties in precision GPR measurements: Identifying and compensating for instrument drift. Subsurface Sensing Technologies and Applications Journal 6 (1): 59-71.

Hermance, J. F., and H. M. Sulieman. 2013. “Comparing Satellite RFE Data with Surface Gauges for 2012 Extreme Storms in African East Sahel.” Remote Sensing Letters 4 (7): 696–705.

Hermance, J. F. 2014. Historical Variability of Rainfall in the African East Sahel of Sudan. Springer Briefs in Earth Sciences. London: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-00575-1_2.

Hermance, John F. & Hussein M. Sulieman, 2014, Assessing daily and seasonal satellite rainfall estimates using local gauges for the anomalous 2012 monsoon season in the African East Sahel, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 35:1, 253-288, DOI: 10.1080/01431161.2013.866294

Background

Education and Training

Year	Degree	Institution
1967	PhD	University of Toronto
1964	MS	University of Toronto

Honors and Awards

Best Presentation Award, Society of Exploration Geophysicists Annual Meeting, 1974.

Researchers@Brown