earth science

Mary C. Hill

Mary C. Hill is a earth science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mary C. Hill rather than just read about it. In short: Mary Catherine Hill is an American hydrologist, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the winner of the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize and of the Dooge Medal of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, a Darcy Lecturer for the National Ground Water Association, and Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America.

Key takeaways

Mary C. Hill belongs to earth science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mary C. Hill to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mary C. Hill from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mary Catherine Hill is an American hydrologist, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the winner of the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize and of the Dooge Medal of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, a Darcy Lecturer for the National Ground Water Association, and Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America. After working for 33 years at the United States Geological Survey, she became a professor of geology at the University of Kansas.

Education and career Hill received her B.S. in Business Administration and Geology from Hope College, and received her masters and doctorate in civil engineering under the direction of George F. Pinder, specializing in water resources, at Princeton University in 1985. Her dissertation was An investigation of hydraulic conductivity estimation in a ground-water flow study of Northern Long Valley, New Jersey. She worked for 33 years at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) before joining the geology department at the University of Kansas as a professor in 2014. She is PI on a $2.5M NSF INFEWS (Innovations at the Food, Energy, Water Nexus) program grant from 2019 to 2024.

Contributions Much of Hill's research at the USGS concerned groundwater modeling, simulation of groundwater, and evaluation of the accuracy of groundwater simulations. At the USGS, she was one of the main developers of the MODFLOW groundwater flow simulation code. More recently, she has also studied modeling and simulation of rainwater runoff. At the University of Kansas, she established the Mary C. Hill Research Fund for Women in the Sciences to help support female junior faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. With Claire R. Tiedeman, Hill is the author of the book Effective Groundwater Model Calibration: With Analysis of Data, Sensitivities, Predictions, and Uncertainty (John Wiley & Sons, 2007).

Recognition Hill won the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize in 2000, and was Darcy Lecturer for the National Ground Water Association in 2001. In 2005, the National Ground Water Association awarded her the M. King Hubbert Award. In 2015, the International Association of Hydrological Sciences awarded her the Dooge Medal. Hill is past president of the International Commission for Ground Water ICGW. She has been a Fellow of the Geological Society of America since 2003, and was also elected as a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union "for development of innovative methods for parameter estimation and sensitivity analysis in hydrologic modeling". In 2021, Hill was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering "for contributions to development and application of methods for parameter estimation and sensitivity analysis in hydrologic models".

References

External links Home page Archived 2019-09-02 at the Wayback Machine Mary C. Hill publications indexed by Google Scholar

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mary C. Hill

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mary C. Hill claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In earth science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mary C. Hill before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mary C. Hill ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mary C. Hill

In research: Mary C. Hill appears in earth science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mary C. Hill in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mary C. Hill is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American geologists, American hydrologists, American women academics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mary C. Hill outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mary C. Hill in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mary C. Hill means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mary C. Hill out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mary C. Hill in simple terms?

Why does Mary C. Hill matter?

Because it connects several earth science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mary C. Hill?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mary C. Hill.