About

Charles F. Harvey is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. His research focuses on reactive transport, carbon capture, coastal groundwater, peatlands, and arsenic. As a faculty member, he is involved in advancing understanding of subsurface processes and developing methods for environmental remediation and sustainable resource management. His work contributes to addressing critical environmental challenges related to groundwater contamination, climate change mitigation, and ecosystem health.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Geology
• Ecology
• Geomorphology
• Geography
• Chemistry
• Physical geography
• Environmental engineering
• Oceanography
• Earth science
• Environmental chemistry

Selected publications

• From canals to the coast: dissolved organic matter and trace metal composition in rivers draining degraded tropical peatlands in Indonesia

  Biogeosciences · 2020 · 43 citations

  • Environmental chemistry
  • Environmental science
  • Chemistry

  Abstract. Worldwide, peatlands are important sources of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and trace metals (TMs) to surface waters, and these fluxes may increase with peatland degradation. In Southeast Asia, tropical peatlands are being rapidly deforested and drained. The blackwater rivers draining these peatland areas have high concentrations of DOM and the potential to be hotspots for CO2 release. However, the fate of this fluvial carbon export is uncertain, and its role as a trace metal carrier has never been investigated. This work aims to address these gaps in our understanding of tropical peatland DOM and associated elements in the context of degraded tropical peatlands in Indonesian Borneo. We quantified dissolved organic carbon and trace metal concentrations in the dissolved and fine colloidal (<0.22 µm) and coarse colloidal (0.22–2.7 µm) fractions and determined the characteristics (δ13C, absorbance, fluorescence: excitation-emission matrix and parallel factor – PARAFAC – analysis) of the peatland-derived DOM as it drains from peatland canals, flows along the Ambawang River (blackwater river) and eventually mixes with the Kapuas Kecil River (whitewater river) before meeting the ocean near the city of Pontianak in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. We observe downstream shifts in indicators of in-stream processing. An increase in the δ13C of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), along with an increase in the C1∕C2 ratio of PARAFAC fluorophores, and a decrease in SUVA (specific UV absorbance) along the continuum suggest the predominance of photo-oxidation. However, very low dissolved oxygen concentrations also suggest that oxygen is quickly consumed by microbial degradation of DOM in the shallow layers of water. Blackwater rivers draining degraded peatlands show significantly higher concentrations of Al, Fe, Pb, As, Ni and Cd compared to the whitewater river. A strong association is observed between DOM, Fe, As, Cd and Zn in the dissolved and fine colloid fraction, while Al is associated with Pb and Ni and present in a higher proportion in the coarse colloidal fraction. We additionally measured the isotopic composition of lead released from degraded tropical peatlands for the first time and show that Pb originates from anthropogenic atmospheric deposition. Degraded tropical peatlands are important sources of DOM and trace metals to rivers and a secondary source of atmospherically deposited contaminants.

  DOI

• Widespread subsidence and carbon emissions across Southeast Asian peatlands

  Nature Geoscience · 2020 · 138 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Environmental science
  • Physical geography
  • Earth science
  DOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Saltwater and Freshwater Fluxes through Coastal Aquifers: Multiple Time Scales of Terrestrial and Oceanic Forcing

  NSF · $351k · 2006–2010

• Collaborative Research: Groundwater Dynamics and Arsenic Contamination in the Ganges Delta: Irrigated Agriculture, Subsurface Chemical Transport, and Aquifer Flushing

  NSF · $428k · 2005–2009

• Collaborative Research: Changes in river-aquifer exchange induced by groundwater pumping, and their effect on arsenic contamination in the Red River Delta, Vietnam

  NSF · $150k · 2015–2019

• Collaborative Research: Hydrologic Disturbance in Tropical Peatlands: Linking Drainage, Soil Moisture, Flammability, and Carbon Fluxes

  NSF · $346k · 2019–2024

• Collaborative Research: Water and Carbon Dynamics in Tropical Peat Lands -- Comparison of a Forested Peat Dome with a Deforested Peat Dome in Borneo

  NSF · $286k · 2011–2015

Frequent coauthors

• Laure Gandois

  Centre de Recherche sur la Biodiversité et l'Environnement

  148 shared

• Gottfried Krodel Ginzburg

  Princeton Theological Seminary

  81 shared

• Patrick Henry

  Hôpital Lariboisière

  81 shared

• Marvin Bergman

  81 shared

• Ann Elizabeth

  81 shared

• Christian Church

  Union Theological Seminary

  81 shared

• Robert C. Grant

  Princess Margaret Cancer Centre

  81 shared

• Reliques Martyrs

  Princeton Theological Seminary

  81 shared

Labs

• Harvey LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Civil Engineering

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1990

• M.S., Civil Engineering

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1986

• B.S., Civil Engineering

  University of California, Berkeley

  1984

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU)
• Fellow of the American Geological Society (GSA)
• Meinzer Award, Geological Society of America
• Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water
• M. King Hubbert Award for Hydrology

Similar researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Rudolf Jaenischh-295
• Robert A. Weinbergh-291
• Susumu Tonegawah-237
• James J. Collinsh-232
• Phillip A. Sharph-227