Rosemary Knight seeks to bring “knowledge into action”; this translates to a career spent working at the cutting edge of near-surface geophysical research applied to solve key water resource problems. Through her career, her research has focused on new methods for acquiring, processing and interpreting geophysical data as well as their application to important problems. Knight’s passion for making research applicable led to the creation of the Stanford Center for Groundwater Evaluation and Management (the GEM Center) in 2008. Through the GEM Center, Knight works with water managers to develop, demonstrate and promote an integrated, data-driven approach to groundwater evaluation and management that uses advanced and emerging geophysical technologies, including electrical resistivity imaging), nuclear magnetic resonance, airborne electromagnetics (AEM) and remote sensing. She has partnered with 19 local, state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey and the California Department of Water Resources, to assess water quality and quantity in California. Her work has ranged from identifying areas of saltwater intrusion from excessive pumping — which was critical to establishing sustainable water management practices in northern Salinas Valley and Monterey Bay — to detecting areas of subsidence due to over pumping, identifying recharge pathways and predicting how groundwater recharge can reduce subsidence in California’s Central Valley. The state of California has surveyed all of California’s high- and medium-priority groundwater basins using AEM under Knight’s guidance. The surveys are ongoing, and the data are currently being used to make critical sustainable water management decisions and impact communities living across the state of California.

While her work in groundwater resource evaluation and management has been transformative, Knight was also fundamental in building the community of near-surface geophysics. She was a founding member of the three major communities that bring near-surface geophysicists together: the Environmental and Engineering Geophysical Society in 1990 and then the Near-Surface Geophysics sections of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists and AGU in 2005. As of 2022, the Near-Surface Geophysics section has grown to 600+ primary members and nearly 3,000 secondary members. Knight is a visionary Earth scientist, a trailblazer, a generous mentor, a role model and a champion of near-surface geophysics. She has left a rich legacy of scientific discovery, mentorship, professional service and societal benefits in her wake and is consequently an excellent candidate for the AGU Ambassador Award.

— Kamini Singha, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado

“Knowledge into action.” When I see my words as the opening to the citation, I find myself asking, How did this start? What moved me in this direction? Thinking back, I am quite sure it all began with reading two short statements about 30 years ago. The first defined vocation: “You are called to work in the place where your great gladness and the world’s great hunger meet.” The second, copied onto a scrap of paper that I still have, dates from 1991: “It is no longer enough to publish our ideas in refereed journals. The emphasis today should be to work with the users of the information we produce.”  So what did I do? I started moving my research from the laboratory to the field, getting closer to the community of people working in groundwater science and management, the people I saw as end users of the information my research group was producing. Instead of controlled laboratory experiments we started taking on as-controlled-as-possible (welcome to fieldwork!) field experiments to study how geophysical measurements could be used to map and monitor hydrogeologic properties and processes. But that still was not enough.  In 2008, we took the major step needed to close the knowledge-into-action gap by putting partnerships with end users at the center of our research. Adam Pidlisecky and I founded the Center for Groundwater Evaluation and Management at Stanford. The unchanged material on the website (gemcenter.stanford.edu) is as much a description of my research program today as it was then: “Central to our approach is the establishment of partnerships that allow the GEM Center to demonstrate state-of-the-science solutions to ‘real-world’ problems . . . encouraging the adoption of new approaches, and new technologies, for addressing the challenging problems we face in the evaluation and management of our groundwater resources.” Creating this center, clearly defining partnerships as a top priority, changed my life. And it had a huge impact on my graduate program. Knowledge without action was no longer acceptable to me or for those I mentored. I found colleagues throughout the near-surface geophysics community who shared this commitment, and together we have built a network of people engaged in discovery science but committed to the action needed to address the challenges we face in climate change and sustainability. I am deeply gratified that this award recognizes the value of knowledge into action. The award goes to an amazing group of students, postdoctoral fellows, research scientists, collaborators and real-world partners who made it all happen and made it all fun. — Rosemary Knight, Stanford University, Standford, California