Research Interests
Mr. McDonald is a hydrologist with 20 years of experience working on general water resources, flow and sediment transport dynamics and the emerging field of eco-hydrology. He has extensive experience performing field, laboratory and computational research on river flow and sediment transport associated with regulated and unregulated rivers related to instream flow requirements and physical habitat. He has been associated with numerous water quantity and quality studies including: precipitation runoff studies of watersheds, contaminant transport of PCB laden sediments, and predictive models of mined pit-lake water quality. His expertise in surface water flow and sediment transport has been used to support litigation of environmental lawsuits. He is the principal developer of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Multi-Dimensional Surface Water Modeling System (MD_SWMS) and co-developer of the iRIC modeling system (www.i-ric.org).