Owen Naughton

• BA BAI PhD
• Lecturer at South East Technological University

The complexity of groundwater flooding poses unique challenges to policy makers and flood risk management agencies. An understanding of the interactions between recharge, storage and transport mechanisms during flood conditions is a precursor to effective groundwater flood risk assessment, but is often absent due to a lack of adequate data. The exa...

Ephemeral karst lakes (turloughs) are wetlands at the interface between groundwater and surface water, and are a characteristic feature of the Irish karst landscape. They are transient lakes resulting from a combination of high rainfall and, accordingly, high groundwater levels in topographic depressions in karstified limestone terrain. Turloughs a...

Numerous studies have highlighted and quantified the role of domestic wastewater treatment systems (DWWTSs) as significant sources of human-specific aquatic contaminants in both developed and developing regions, particularly with respect to private and municipal groundwater supplies. However, from a socio-hydrological perspective, little work has f...

Estimating pollutant concentrations at a local and regional scale is essential in environmental and health policy decision making. Here we present a novel land use regression (LUR) modelling methodology that exploits the high temporal resolution of fixed-site monitoring (FSM) to produce a national-scale air quality model for the key pollutant NO2....

Wetlands are vital habitats which play a critical role in global biodiversity. Their functioning is intrinsically linked with their hydrological regime and so the monitoring of water level data is critical to their management and conservation. However, monitoring the hydrology of wetlands can be challenging. Their large number and wide distribution...

A novel automated approach for mapping nonurban flood extents using satellite-based Sentinel-1C-band SAR data is presented and applied in the Republic of Ireland. The methodology mapped the maximum flood extent of over 25,000 detected water bodies across Ireland over a five-year period (2016–2021). Flood extents were classified using a semi-automat...

A 28-year hydrological record on four intermittent wetlands (turloughs) in a hydraulically linked karst area in the west of Ireland was used to assess ecohydrological metrics for different vegetation communities. A methodology using a combination of continuous water level monitoring and high resolution topographic surveying was used to develop a de...

Part A of the report presents the developed framework for the GIS-based high-level climate change risk assessment. It also presents the implementation of this framework across four of Ireland’s critical infrastructure (CI) sectors. This high-level analysis identified a number of key climate change risks for Ireland’s CI, and examined these using GI...

Lowland karst aquifers can generate unique wetland ecosystems which are caused by groundwater fluctuations that result in extensive groundwater–surface water interactions (i.e. flooding). However, the complex hydrogeological attributes of these systems, linked to extremely fast aquifer recharge processes and flow through well-connected conduit netw...

Lowland karst aquifers can generate unique wetland habitats which are caused by groundwater fluctuations that result in extensive groundwater-surface water interactions (i.e. flooding). However, the complex hydrogeological attributes of these systems often present difficulty in predicting how they will respond to changing climatological conditions....

Background: Links between air pollution and asthma are less well established for older adults than some younger groups. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations are widely used as an indicator of transport-related air pollution, and some literature suggests NO2 may directly affect asthma. Methods: This study used data on 8162 adults >50 years old i...

Karst related groundwater flooding represents a significant hazard in many rural communities in Ireland. A series of unprecedented flood events in recent years have reinforced the need to improve our ability to quantify the location and likelihood of flood occurrence. Geological Survey Ireland, in collaboration with Carlow Institute of Technology a...

The IPCC states that climate change has unequivocally impacted on various aspects of the natural and built environment, including our vital critical infrastructure systems (transport, energy, water/wastewater and communications). It is thus essential for countries to gain an understanding of critical infrastructure vulnerability to current and futu...

Wetlands provide a habitat for a wide variety of plant and animal species and contribute significantly to overall biodiversity in Ireland. Despite these known ecosystem services, the total wetland area in Ireland has reduced significantly over the past few decades leading to an ongoing need to protect such environments. The EU Habitats Directive (9...

Groundwater flooding is a phenomenon which has become recognised as a significant natural hazard in recent years. The Gort lowland karst catchment situated in south Co. Galway on the western coast of Ireland has experienced two extreme groundwater flood events in the past decade leading to considerable damage and disruption. Groundwater flooding in...

Field data of topography, water levels, and peat hydraulic conductivity collected over a 28‐year period have revealed the impacts of marginal drainage on uncut raised bog ecohydrology and its peat properties. Drainage of the regional groundwater body has induced changes in the hydraulic properties of deep peat, with peat compression decreasing hydr...

Groundwater flooding represents a significant hazard in many rural communities in Ireland. The unprecedented flood events in recent years have reinforced the need to improve our ability to quantify the location and likelihood of flood occurrence. Geological Survey Ireland, in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin and Carlow Institute of Technol...

This report describes the application of numerical weather prediction (NWP) simulations to develop high-quality, long-term, gridded climate datasets of hydro-climate variables for Ireland, covering the period 1981–2016.

Conventional methods of monitoring wetlands and detecting changes over time can be time-consuming and costly. Inaccessibility and remoteness of many wetlands is also a limiting factor. Hence, there is a growing recognition of remote sensing techniques as a viable and cost-effective alternative to field-based ecosystem monitoring. Wetlands encompass...

The warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Changes are already being felt in Ireland and are expected to intensify into the future. It is thus essential to understand the vulnerability of Irish Critical Infrastructure (CI) to climate change, in order to develop appropriate climate adaptation strategies and improve infrastructure resilience d...

A significant body of research has focused on the role of domestic wastewater treatment systems (DWWTSs) as sources of human-specific aquatic contaminants in both developed and developing regions. However, to date few studies have sought to investigate the awareness, attitudes and behaviours of DWWTS owners and the efficacy of associated communicat...

The Gort Lowlands is an extensively karstified lowland limestone catchment located in Co. Galway, on the western coast of Ireland. The hydrogeomorphological history of the Gort Lowlands is complex; recurrent karstification and glaciation of the Carboniferous limestone formations has created an extensive conduit and cave system that dominates ground...

The Gort Lowlands is an extensively karstified lowland limestone catchment located in Co. Galway, on the western coast of Ireland. The hydrogeomorphological history of the Gort Lowlands is complex; recurrent karstification and glaciation of the Carboniferous limestone formations has created an extensive conduit and cave system that dominates ground...

The spatial and temporal complexities of flooding in karst terrains pose unique challenges in flood risk management. Lowland karst landscapes can be particularly susceptible to groundwater flooding due to a combination of low aquifer storage, high diffusivity and limited or absent surface drainage. Numerous notable groundwater flood events have bee...

Recent years have seen a marked increase in fluvial, pluvial, and coastal flooding in Ireland, with many millions of euros of infrastructural damage as a direct result of these events, and with the severe flooding of the Shannon basin in late 2015/early 2016 being an obvious example. Both nationally and globally, climate models predict that flood i...

In recent years, the concept of “isoscapes” has been used to describe spatiotemporal stable isotope distributions within natural environments including groundwater systems at multiple scales. This study presents an updated groundwater �18O isoscape for the Republic of Ireland and describes the climatic and geological drivers influencing 18O composi...

A novel hybrid model has been developed to support the provision of real-time air quality forecasts. Statistical techniques have been applied in parallel with air mass history modelling to provide an efficient and accurate forecasting system with the ability to identify high NO2 events, which tend to be the episodes of most significance in Ireland....

This article describes a new methodology for increasing the spatial representativeness of individual monitoring sites. Air pollution levels at a given point are influenced by emission sources in the immediate vicinity. Since emission sources are rarely uniformly distributed around a site, concentration levels will inevitably be most affected by the...

Nutrient contamination of surface waters and groundwaters is an issue of growing importance as the risks associated with agricultural run-off escalate due to increasing demands on global food production. In this study, the influence of surface water–groundwater interaction on the nutrient flux in a lowland karst catchment was investigated with the...

The first annual hydrograph from an ephemerally-flooded doline in the UK is described. Flood duration and volume were characterised by combining water-level data with a detailed topographic survey. Rapid surface runoff of Na–SO4-type water is derived from a localized topographic catchment. The inflow stream produced a ‘flashy’ hydrograph with maxim...

The concatenated effects of increased frequency of intense precipitations due to climate change and anthropogenic impacts in the form of construction in floodplains, channel straightening and increased presence of impermeable surfaces are increasing the incidence of floods in urban areas. This paper investigates behavioral responses to a natural ha...

Nutrient contamination of surface and groundwaters is an issue of growing importance as the risks associated with agricultural runoff escalate due to increasing demands on global food production. In this study, the nutrient flux occurring within the surface and groundwaters of a lowland karst catchment in western Ireland was investigated with the a...

Nutrient contamination of surface and groundwaters is an issue of growing importance as the risks associated with agricultural runoff escalate due to increasing demands on global food production. In this study, the nutrient flux occurring within the surface and groundwaters of a lowland karst catchment in western Ireland was investigated with the a...

Summary Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is now recognised to be a process of significant importance to coastal systems and is of increasing interest within oceanographic and hydrologic research communities. However, due to the inherent difficulty of measuring SGD accurately, its quantification at any particular location is a relatively slow p...

This research has used continuous water level measurements five groundwater-fed lakes (or turloughs) in a linked lowland karst network of south Galway in Ireland over a 3 year period in order to elucidate the hydrogeological controls and conduit configurations forming the flooded karstic hydraulic system beneath the ground. The main spring outflow...

[1] In lowland karst areas of Ireland topographic depressions which get intermittently flooded on an annual cycle via groundwater sources are termed turloughs. These are sites of high ecological interest as they have communities and substrate characteristic of wetlands. The flooding in many turlough basins is due to insufficient capacity of the und...

The temporal transition of species dominance following disturbances is strongly influenced by taxon life histories. In temporary water bodies, seasonal progression can be rapid. The community response of aquatic littoral invertebrate communities to disturbance was measured across four temporary water bodies (turloughs) representing a hydroperiod gr...

Irish turloughs are hydrologically dynamic karst wetlands that are frequently used as marginal grazing land. We hypothesised that flood duration (FD) is a key driver of the spatial distribution of selected soil properties, and consequently turlough grazing practices. Six soil samples were collected during dry periods from eighteen turloughs between...

Pant-y Llyn is Wales’ and Britain’s only recorded Turlough. It is a key feature of Cernydd Carmel SSSI and SAC and a groundwater dependent terrestrial ecosystem (GWDTE) that has been identified as being at risk of significant damage from enriched groundwater input. This investigation is a collaborative project between hydrogeologists from Environme...

The seasonal succession of phytoplankton communities in turloughs (seasonal karstic Irish lakes) is described for the first time. R-selected species dominated throughout the duration of flooding and a clear succession of communities, with three distinct phases, was found in most turloughs: prevalence of Chlamydomonas, cryptophytes, pennate diatoms...