You have entered the website of the Water and Environmental Research Institute of the Western Pacific (WERI) at the University of Guam. We are currently six faculty and five staff and our mission is to seek solutions through research, teaching and outreach programs, to issues and problems associated with the location, production, distribution and management of freshwater resources in Guam, the CNMI and the FSM.
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John Jenson Ph.D. Professor of Environmental Geology Phone: 671-735-2689 (fax 734-8890) (GMT+10 hrs) jjenson(weriguam)uguam.uog.edu?subject=Faculty - WeriGuam.org |
Dr. Jenson's research encompasses applied as well as fundamental aspects of groundwater hydrology and related environmental science. Current work includes hydrogeological studies of the Northern Guam Lens Aquifer, the island’s principal source of drinking water. Recent work includes groundwater modeling of Micronesian atolls. For more than a decade, Dr. Jenson has collaborated with Dr. John Mylroie of Mississippi State University to extend and apply the Carbonate Island Karst Model to the region's tectonically active limestone-capped islands: Guam, Saipan, Tinian, and Rota in the Mariana Islands, and finally to Fais, the one raised limestone island in the Caroline Islands. Research on global-scale questions includes collaborative studies of the hydrology of the pseudo-karst aquifers at the base of continental ice sheets and the potential influence of saturated subglacial till on ice-sheet behavior, with Dr. Chandra Desai, University of Arizona, and Dr. Anders Carlson, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Recent work also includes a field study of the sea-level history northern Guam since the last interglacial. Knowledge acquired on the caves and karst of the Mariana Islands has enabled a multi-disciplinary collaborative effort to evaluate the paleoclimate record from the western Pacific, and a local paleo-climatic study, in collaboration with Dr. Jay Banner and others at the University of Texas-Austin.
