
Jean-Christophe ComteUniversity of Aberdeen | ABDN · School of Geosciences
Jean-Christophe Comte
MSc, PhD
About
97
Publications
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
August 2019 - present
October 2014 - July 2019
September 2009 - September 2014
Publications
Publications (97)
The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara in SE Tanzania contains ruins of mosques and palaces dating from the 11th to 19th century AD. Historical trade of Indian Ocean resources such as mangroves, ivory, and slaves supported by seasonally reversing monsoon winds along the Swahili coast is referred to 2000 years ago. Climate...
The isolation of cave ecosystems from dynamic surface environments gives them relatively stable conditions, allowing underlying features of the cave, such as geochemistry, hydrology and microbial biogeochemical cycling to be the driving influences on the composition of microbial niches within cave ecosystems. The transfer of gases, either geologica...
The aim of this project was to provide summaries of future predictions of water scarcity in Scotland and the impacts this may have, tailored to three groups
of abstractors: crop producers, livestock producers and distilleries.
The key questions addressed included:
1. How will water scarcity in Scotland impact the availability of surface waters and...
In the last three decades, the world has experienced a rapid emergence of megacities. The increasing demographics, urbanization, and water demand brought severe and undesired effects on the quantity and quality of their water resources. A prime example is Lagos (Nigeria, West Africa), which is projected to become the world's largest city by 2100, a...
Frequencies and intensities of droughts have increased due to climate change, providing an urgent impetus to improve understanding of ecohydrological fluxes in drought-sensitive areas where water and food security are threatened. We used a multi-proxy approach for assessing the effects of landuse and catchment properties on recharge and groundwater...
Arid and semiarid zones, including the southern Mediterranean countries, are among the world’s most affected by water scarcity. Unconventional water resources, such as submarine fresh groundwater, may be key contributors to mitigate ongoing and future water crises for coastal regions and islands. In the Gulf of Gabes, Tunisia, several deep confined...
The Limpopo River Basin (LRB) is highly vulnerable to recurrent floods and droughts, which significantly threaten its water and food security. Sustainable groundwater management is necessary to improve resilience. Scientists and stakeholders must collaborate to evaluate management scenarios that can identify sustainable practices. A transboundary b...
Diffuse agricultural pollution is one of the greatest challenges to achieving good chemical and ecological status of Scotland’s water bodies. The River Ythan in Aberdeenshire was designated a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) in the year 2000, due to the eutrophication of the Ythan Estuary and rising nitrate trends in Private Water Supply (PWS) groundw...
Urban green spaces (UGS) can help mitigate hydrological impacts of urbanisation and climate change through precipitation infiltration, evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge. However, there is a need to understand how precipitation is partitioned by contrasting vegetation types in order to target UGS management for specific ecosystem services....
Lagos, Nigeria is one of the World's fastest-growing cities. The increasing water demand has led to depletion and deterioration of the groundwater resources contained in its highly productive coastal aquifers. Groundwater recharge processes and drivers, which dictate groundwater replenishment, and their changes associated with rapid urbanization, a...
River restoration and rehabilitation projects are widespread, but rarely include the data needed to fully evaluate if they are successful in achieving their goals or how long the process of readjustment takes before a new ‘recovered’ regime state is reached. Here we present a seven-year post-project dataset detailing the morpho-sedimentary response...
Karst ecosystems represent up to 25% of the land surface and recent studies highlight their potential role as a sink for atmospheric methane. Despite this, there is limited knowledge of the diversity and distribution of methane-oxidizing bacteria (MOB) or methanogens in karst caves and the sub-surface environment in general. Here, we performed a su...
While extreme rainfall events may provide rare opportunities for replenishment of surface water and groundwater resources in vulnerable (semi)arid areas, they are typically also associated with widespread flooding. The impacts on contaminant movement associated with spatio-temporally complex relationships between surface water and groundwater durin...
Despite the broad range of interest and possible applications, the controls on the electric surface charge and the zeta potential of gneiss at conditions relevant to naturally fractured systems remain unreported. There are no published zeta potential measurements conducted in such systems at equilibrium, hence, the effects of composition, concentra...
Calibration of groundwater models is frequently hampered by limited availability of hydrogeological data. Nonintrusive
geophysical methods are increasingly used to provide higher spatio-temporal resolution datasets for
identification of hydrological processes and estimation of hydraulic properties. In groundwater model calibration
performed through...
Managed aquifer recharge operations are often conducted in near-bank areas to regulate water resources or reduce seawater intrusion. Yet little is known about the influence of surface water level fluctuations at different temporal scales on MAR performance. A generalized conceptual model was developed based on an investigation site in Western China...
Understanding the role of geological heterogeneity on the performance of managed aquifer recharge (MAR) in terms of effective groundwater storage is crucial to design MAR systems. Natural aquifers are affected by a variety of geologic strata and structures at different scales, which are responsible for wide ranging hydraulic properties. This study...
The drought of summer 2018, which affected much of Northern Europe, resulted in low river flows, biodiversity loss and threats to water supplies. In some regions, like the Scottish Highlands, the summer drought followed two consecutive, anomalously dry, winter periods. Here, we examine how the drought, and its antecedent conditions, affected soil m...
Sharp-interface seawater intrusion models present shorter run times than variable density codes, which makes them practical for regional, decision-support groundwater modeling. Although parameter estimation and uncertainty analyses are essential steps for model-based decision making, their implementation in seawater intrusion models has remained li...
Sediments deposited by glacial meltwaters (for example, ice‐contact delta deposits) form permeable packages in the subsurface that can act as reservoirs for both water and hydrocarbons. They are also an important source of aggregate for the construction industry. As reservoirs they are challenging to characterize in terms of their structure, flow a...
It is necessary to combine the understanding of physical environmental drivers with social, economic, cultural and political perspectives and information to build resilience to future flood and drought hazards. We present a flexible collaborative modelling approach to improve resilience to hydrological extremes in large basins with application to t...
Alluvial fans often support ephemeral streams whose flow regimes and sediment dynamics are strongly controlled by fan sedimentary characteristics and interactions with shallow groundwater aquifers. The hydrogeology of such fans has most often been documented for large fans located within arid climate zones. This research focuses on a small (0.075 k...
The scarcity of direct hydrogeological data, such as hydraulic levels measured in boreholes, is an important limitation for the calibration of groundwater models. By using geophysical data it is possible to use additional geophysical datasets to inform hydrogeological models. However, some of the strategies to use geophysics in groundwater model ca...
The Limpopo River Basin (LRB) is highly vulnerable to hydrological extremes (floods and droughts). Groundwater may play an important role in building resilience to hydrological extremes in the Limpopo River Basin (LRB), as an essential resource for sustainable development and already the primary source of water for more than 70% people in the regio...
The calibration of groundwater models is usually limited by the scarcity of direct hydraulic data. The estimation of heterogeneous distribution of hydraulic properties can be improved through a joint or coupled inversion in which the calibration dataset is complemented with geophysical information. The procedure requires a coupled multiphysical for...
The Nairobi volcano-sedimentary regional aquifer system (NAS) of Kenya hosts >6 M people, including 4.7 M people in the city of Nairobi. This work combines analysis of multi-decadal in-situ water-level data with numerical groundwater modelling to provide an assessment of the past and likely future evolution of Nairobi’s groundwater resources. Since...
Quantifying groundwater storage in weathered/fractured basement rock aquifers can be challenging owing to both their high degree of heterogeneity and their overall low storage capacity. Therefore, in these aquifers, the use of direct borehole hydraulic data is usually insufficient. Here we assessed the popular method of electrical resistivity tomog...
In coastal areas, geological heterogeneity influences the geometry and characteristics of the freshwater-saltwater mixing zone. Geophysical electrical and electromagnetic methods are increasingly used to delineate the freshwater-saltwater mixing zone or for groundwater model calibration. However, in practical applications, it is common when assessi...
It is necessary to combine the understanding of physical environmental drivers with social, economic, cultural and political perspectives and information to build resilience to future flood and drought hazards. We present a flexible collaborative modelling approach to improve resilience to hydrological extremes in large basins with application to t...
Seawater intrusion is a natural phenomenon occurring in coastal aquifers, which is exacerbated by borehole abstraction, which may lead to contamination of water supplies. Borehole data are usually too scarce spatially to enable accurate identification and delineation of seawater intrusion. For that purpose, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) a...
Purpose
The aim of this work was to identify and analyze the records of flood-drought cycles as preserved in the sediments of the Notwane reservoir, southern Botswana, in order to better understand how extreme events affect water and sediment quality. This work represents the first attempt to study the reservoir sediments in arid to semi-arid envir...
Although geographical hydrology research at Aberdeen contributed significant insights into the connections between river channel processes and landscape evolution in the early twentieth century it was not until the 1980s that hydrology became a discernible research theme in the Department of Geography. Whilst the research initially focused on under...
Improving the understanding and influence of small (metric) scale geological features in groundwater flow has been object of interest in the hydrogeological community for decades. In coastal aquifers, geological features such as fractures, sedimentary structures, karstification or presence of dykes, strongly determine the distribution and patterns...
Geophysical techniques are well suited to provide additional data for the parametrization of groundwater models. Joint use of geophysical and hydrological information through coupled modelling and inversion relies in an appropriate transfer function, the petrophysical model. Due to uncertainties in the spatial distribution of petrophysical model pa...
Electrical geophysical techniques are increasingly utilized for delineation of seawater intrusion patterns in coastal aquifers. Geophysical data can be utilized in groundwater models for calibration and verification. In these models, geophysical signal is converted into hydraulic variables, and vice versa, using a petrophysical relationship. Howeve...
In overexploited coastal aquifers threatened or affected by saline intrusion, managed aquifer recharge (MAR) is increasingly applied in the aim of maintaining or recovering freshwater quantity and quality. The long-term regionalscale effectiveness of MAR, however, lacks field examples. The Korba coastal aquifer (Tunisia) has been increasingly overe...
Fresh groundwater resources in coastal East Africa are crucial for the region’s socio-economic development but are under threat of salinization caused by changes in recharge patterns and increasing abstraction. With the aim of establishing the drivers behind saltwater intrusion and its current spatial extent, we studied the Kenyan South Coast aquif...
Groundwater pathways and residence times are controlled by aquifer flow and storage properties, which, in weathered/fractured hard rock aquifers, are characterized by high spatial heterogeneity. Building on earlier work in a metamorphic aquifer in NW Ireland, new clay mineralogy and analyses of geophysical data provided high spatial resolution cons...
The metamorphic basement units of the Upper Ouémé watershed in Benin have been investigated to identify the structural controls on aquifer properties, groundwater flow and water balance at large scale. Spatial analysis of borehole and hydrogeophysical data suggests that large-scale weathering profiles, aquifer transmissivity and storage properties...
Understanding the spatio-temporal variability in groundwater recharge is a prerequisite to sustainable management of aquifers. Spatial analysis of groundwater stable isotopes uncovered predominant controls on groundwater recharge in the Nairobi aquifer system (NAS) and the South Coast aquifer (SC), two exemplar East African aquifers relied upon by...
We propose a simple and robust approach for investigating uncertainty in the results of inversion in geophysics. We apply this approach to inversion of Surface Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (SNMR) data, which is also known as Magnetic Resonance Sounding (MRS). Solution of this inverse problem is known to be non-unique. We inverse MRS data using the we...
Volcanic dykes are common discrete heterogeneities in aquifers; however there is a lack of field examples of, and methodologies for, comprehensive in situ characterization of their properties with respect to groundwater flow and solute transport. We have applied an integrated multi-physics approach to quantify the effect of dolerite dykes on saltwa...
Study region: Coastal areas of Kenya (Kilifi County), Tanzania (Kilwa district) and Comoros (Ngazidja island), East Africa.
Study focus: Research aimed to understand the physical and societal drivers of groundwater accessibility and identify critical aspects of groundwater access and knowledge gaps that require further monitoring and research. Inte...
Numerical modelling of aquifers is a standard process in the sustainable management of groundwater resources. To be reliable, a groundwater model requires an accurate geological framework, particularly where structure is complex. The Lagan Valley aquifer near Belfast is an example of an otherwise generally homogenous sandstone aquifer intruded by e...
Salinization remains a major cause of degradation of water quality in the world. This widespread phenomenon is particularly problematic in arid or semi-arid areas where freshwater resources are found in very limited quantities and where the recharge by rainwater is low. The mechanisms behind the salinization of a groundwater system are various and...
In Grande Comore island, groundwater is the only safe water resource for drinking but only one third of the population have access to this resource. All existing wells are drilled in the volcanic aquifers of the coastal zone. Among them, about one third provide groundwater of acceptable salinity (less than 1 g/L), one third provide water of salinit...
La Réunion Island and Grande Comore are oceanic islands entirely formed by young and still active volcanoes, namely Piton de la Fournaise and Karthala. These geological features are responsible for a particular type of hydrosystem and present a unique challenge regarding the prospection and management of water resources. Young volcanic terrains are...
In volcanic islands, the quality of coastal groundwater displays a high degree of spatial heterogeneity related to 1) the diversity and heterogeneity of geological formations and 2) the variable degree of confinement due to variable weathering patterns and superficial cover. Hydrodynamic characterization of coastal aquifers is commonly performed th...
The process of accounting for heterogeneity has made significant advances in statistical research, primarily in the framework of stochastic analysis and the development of multiple-point statistics (MPS). Among MPS techniques, the direct sampling (DS) method is tested to determine its ability to delineate heterogeneity from aerial magnetics data in...
In highly heterogeneous aquifer systems, conceptualization of regional groundwater flow models frequently results in the generalization or negligence of aquifer heterogeneities, both of which may result in erroneous model outputs. The calculation of equivalence related to hydrogeological parameters and applied to upscaling provides a means of accou...
In basement rock aquifers, the hydrogeological parameters are often highly spatially variable and influenced by many structural controls. From fracturing, weathering and lithological diversity, obtaining a spatial distribution of flow parameters at a regional scale is wrought with difficulties, hindering groundwater modelling. In this study, the me...
Identifying groundwater contributions to baseflow forms an essential part of surface water body characterisation. The Gortinlieve catchment (5km(2)) comprises a headwater stream network of the Carrigans River, itself a tributary of the River Foyle, NW Ireland. The bedrock comprises poorly productive metasediments that are characterised by fracture...
In coral islands, groundwater is a crucial freshwater resource for terrestrial life, including human water supply. Response of the freshwater lens to expected climate changes and subsequent vegetation alterations is quantified for Grande Glorieuse, a low-lying coral island in the Western Indian Ocean. Distributed models of recharge, evapotranspirat...
Accurate conceptual models of groundwater systems are essential for correct interpretation of monitoring data in catchment studies. In surface-water dominated hard rock regions, modern ground and surface water monitoring programmes often have very high resolution chemical, meteorological and hydrological observations but lack an equivalent emphasis...
When studying heterogeneous aquifer systems, especially at regional scale, a degree of generalization is antici-pated. This can be due to sparse sampling regimes, complex depositional environments or lack of accessibility to measure the subsurface. This can lead to an inaccurate conceptualization which can be detrimental when applied to groundwater...
Under the European Union Water Framework Directive, Member States are
required to assess water quality across both surface water and
groundwater bodies. Subsurface pollution plumes, originating from a
variety of sources, pose a significant direct risk to water quality. The
monitoring and characterisation of groundwater contaminant plumes is
general...