Dr. Carl Mendoza

Biography

Dr. Carl Mendoza, Professor Emeritus (University of Alberta) and Principal Hydrogeological Engineer (BGC Engineering), specializes in physical and contaminant hydrogeology. Dr. Mendoza has over thirty years of experience analyzing groundwater flow and contaminant transport at a range of spatial and temporal scales. He has extensive experience writing numerical codes, analyzing field data and developing conceptual models, and applying numerical models to non-linear hydrogeological problems. Such problems include interactions between surface water and groundwater, water supply and resource evaluation, mine reclamation, environmental effects assessments, density-dependent transport and the migration of contaminants, including multi-phase flow and dissolution of oily liquids, in the subsurface.

Research projects directed by Dr. Mendoza and his collaborators range from monitoring, modeling and understanding the hydrologic and ecologic interactions between wetland and forestland units on the (relatively) undisturbed Boreal Plain of Alberta, through parallel and complementary studies on previously reclaimed oil-sand mining leases, to the design, long-term monitoring and evaluation of newly reconstructed and reclaimed landscapes for oil-sand mining companies. His consulting work largely involves analyzing and simulating water flow and solute transport near mines in the mountains of western Canada and on the Canadian Shield.

Dr. Mendoza has degrees in Geological Engineering, Earth Sciences and Hydrogeology and has worked with the conventional oil-and-gas, oil-sands mining, hard-rock mining and forestry industries. He has advised government agencies on policy and has shaped reclamation guidelines for the oil-sands mining industry. Professor Mendoza regularly taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Introductory Hydrogeology, Contaminant Hydrogeology, Quantitative Hydrogeology (Numerical Modelling) and Environmental Geology. He is co-author of over sixty refereed scientific articles, thirty conference papers and one hundred international or national conference presentations.