ADELAIDE IN PERSON EVENT - New Techniques for Characterising Groundwater Contamination

Join the Adelaide ALGA branch to hear about some of the newest advances in characterising groundwater contamination from one of the country’s leading hydrogeologists. Professor Peter Cook is both a Professor of Hydrogeology at Flinders University, and the Director of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training.

Professor Cook will join us to discuss new techniques that the contaminated land industry could be adopting to better understand groundwater impacts here in Australia. Within the past 20 years, academic research has developed several new approaches to improve the characterisation of groundwater systems and the mapping of contaminant distributions in the subsurface. Critical insight into contaminant fate and transport can be gained through reconstructing past contaminant loads to better predict future migration. Some of these techniques are still in development, whilst others are now widely used in North America and Europe but seeing little application in Australia. This presentation will focus on three new developments:

1. Use of borehole flowmeters and well dilution tests for mapping subsurface heterogeneity, and hence identifying likely contaminant flow paths.
2. Use of radon for mapping organic contamination in soils and aquifers, and assessing contaminant source remediation.
3. Use of groundwater age dating for reconstructing contaminant history, assessing susceptibility of wells to contamination, and predicting future contamination levels.

Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your knowledge, earn CPD points and lead from the front!

About the Speaker:

Professor Peter Cook
Flinders University

Professor Peter Cook is the Director of Australia’s National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, an organization that represents 14 Australian universities and numerous government and private industry organisations involved in researching and managing our groundwater resources. His own research has spanned groundwater recharge, surface water – groundwater interactions, salinization processes, groundwater dependent ecosystems, and the use of environmental tracers for characterizing groundwater flow paths and estimating groundwater flow rates. He has co-written books on environmental tracers and ecohydrology and has published more than 100 research papers in leading international journals. In 2018 he was acknowledged as Australia’s Field Leader in Hydrology and Water Resources by Australia’s national newspaper, and in 2020 he was ranked amongst the world’s top 2% of scientists across all fields. He was the first scientist from outside North America to be awarded the prestigious U.S. National Ground Water Association’s Henry Darcy Distinguished Lecturer award.

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