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Publications (86)
The Permo-Triassic Sherwood Sandstone Group is an important aquifer with potential for both shallow and deep geothermal energy use in the UK. This study investigates the hydrogeological properties of the shallow buried Sherwood Sandstone Group in Northern Ireland, with a focus on its porosity, using borehole nuclear magnetic resonance (BNMR) and pe...
This paper proposes a flood risk visualization method that is (1) readily transferable (2) hyperlocal, (3) computationally inexpensive, and (4) geometrically accurate. This proposal is for risk communication, to provide high-resolution, three-dimensional flood visualization at the sub-meter level. The method couples a laser scanning point cloud wit...
Airborne magnetics have found few applications in investigating basalt-trapped areas because anomaly interferences from deep and shallow sources prevent clear identification of subjacent dyke systems. The structural positioning of dykes is of major importance in basin studies due to their role as a heat source for maturing organic matter and plumbi...
Metallic structures are a common noise source in Slingram electromagnetic surveys because they interact with the primary magnetic field generated by the transmitter coil and create a secondary magnetic field that distorts the apparent conductivity readings from a layered or homogeneous subsurface. The main challenge is understanding how their influ...
Elevated concentrations of As, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, V and Zn in topsoils in Belfast, Northern Ireland have been found to exceed assessment criteria in the city and therefore may pose a risk to human health. Most generic assessment criteria (GAC) for potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in soils assume PTEs are 100% bioavailable to humans. Here we use in-vi...
This paper introduces a Big Data approach for automatically extracting basement information (i.e. presence of basements and levels) from LiDAR data and digital terrain models. The proposed approach is fast, scalable, and can handle very large amounts of data due to the use of parallel computing. Experimental results showed that the algorithm could...
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...
Street view imagery databases such as Google Street View, Mapillary, and Karta View provide great spatial and temporal coverage for many cities globally. Those data, when coupled with appropriate computer vision algorithms, can provide an effective means to analyse aspects of the urban environment at scale. As an effort to enhance current practices...
Groundwater transport in crystalline rocks follows pathways along fractured zones because of low primary porosity and permeability in such formations. Fractured systems encompass an imbricated set of joints and fractures with different lengths, apertures and orientations resulting in complex permeable systems with heterogeneous groundwater transpor...
Chronic kidney disease (CKD), a collective term for many causes of progressive renal failure, is increasing worldwide due to ageing, obesity and diabetes. However, these factors cannot explain the many environmental clusters of renal disease that are known to occur globally. This study uses data from the UK Renal Registry (UKRR) including CKD of un...
The occurrence of environmental clusters of Chronic Kidney Disease of uncertain aetiology (CKDu), where there is no known cause for the onset of kidney dysfunction, is a concern globally. Waterborne exposure pathways in the environment may result in indirect or direct ingestion of trace elements with potential health risks. This research examines t...
Productive regions in the Crystalline Basement Aquifer System (CBAS) in Paraná state, Brazil, were identified qualitatively and quantitatively through spatial correlation of wells and geological conditions such as lineaments, hydrography, aeromagnetometry and lithology. Different methods applied in Precambrian metamorphic and igneous aquifers aroun...
Each year, lives are needlessly lost to floods due to residents failing to heed evacuation advisories. Risk communication research suggests that flood warnings need to be more vivid, contextualized, and visualizable, in order to engage the message recipient. This paper makes the case for the development of a low-cost augmented reality tool that ena...
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...
The massive amounts of spatio-temporal information often present in LiDAR data sets make their storage, processing, and visualisation computationally demanding. There is an increasing need for systems and tools that support all the spatial and temporal components and the three-dimensional nature of these datasets for effortless retrieval and visual...
Dike swarms are mega-structures observed in different geological contexts which may affect groundwater flow systems. These structures are well recognizable from airborne magnetic, however it is difficult to obtain quantitative information about distribution and mean properties of dikes that generate the observed magnetic anomalies. This work presen...
Geophysical well logging has been applied for fracture characterization in crystalline terrains by physical properties measurements and borehole wall imaging. Some of these methods can be applied to monitor pumping tests to identify fractures contributing to groundwater flow and, with this, determine hydraulic conductivity and transmissivity along...
This research uses an urban soil geochemistry database of elemental concentration to examine the potential relationship between Standardised Incidence Rates (SIRs) of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) of uncertain aetiology (CKDu), and cumulative low level geogenic and diffuse anthropogenic contamination of soils with PTEs. A compositional data analysis...
This paper introduces a novel LiDAR point cloud data encoding solution that is compact, flexible, and fully supports distributed data storage within the Hadoop distributed computing environment. The proposed data encoding solution is developed based on Sequence File and Google Protocol Buffers. Sequence File is a generic splittable binary file form...
Geophysical well logging has been applied for fracture characterization in crystalline terrains by physical properties measurements and borehole wall imaging. Some of these methods can be applied to monitor pumping tests to identify fractures contributing to groundwater flow and, with this, determine hydraulic conductivity and transmissivity along...
Geophysical well logging has been applied for fracture characterization in crystalline terrains by physical properties measurements and borehole wall imaging. Some of these methods can be applied to monitor pumping tests to identify fractures contributing with groundwater flow and, with this determine hydraulic conductivity and transmissivity along...
Here, we show the electrical response, bacterial community, and remediation of hydrocarbon-contaminated groundwater from a gasworks site using a graphite-chambered bio-electrochemical system (BES) that utilizes granular activated carbon (GAC) as both sorption agent and high surface area anode. Our innovative concept is the design of a graphite elec...
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...
Treating environmental contaminants is a very important, and largely overlooked, environmental issue, that has received considerable public attention over the last few years.Bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) have gained increasingly popularity over the last years especially in monitoring and clean-up of contaminants. BES are systems that combine wa...
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...
The unknown aetiology of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) has attracted recent attention as a result of the increasing global prevalence and recent reviews of occupational and environmental exposure to nephrotoxins. The main focus of this research is to examine the potential relationship between environmental exposure to known nephrotoxins including ar...
Characterising catchment scale biogeochemical processes controlling nitrate fate in groundwater constitutes a fundamental consideration when applying programmes of measures to reduce risks posed by diffuse agricultural pollutants to water quality. Combining hydrochemical analyses with nitrate isotopic data and physical hydrogeological measurements...
Despite fractured hard rock aquifers underlying over 65% of Ireland, knowledge of key processes controlling groundwater recharge in these bedrock systems is inadequately constrained. In this study, we examined 19 groundwater-level hydrographs from two Irish hillslope sites underlain by hard rock aquifers. Water-level time-series in clustered monito...
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...
This review paper discusses how Tellus and Tellus Border soil and stream geochemistry data have been used to investigate the spatial relationship between certain diseases and levels of potentially harmful elements (PHEs) in soils and water. The research hypothesis is that long-term low-level oral exposure to PHEs via soil and water may result in cu...
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...
Lead (Pb) is a non-threshold toxin capable of inducing toxic effects at any blood level but availability of soil screening criteria for assessing potential health risks is limited. The oral bioaccessibility of Pb in 163 soil samples was attributed to sources through solubility estimation and domain identification. Samples were extracted following t...
Geogenic nickel (Ni), vanadium (V) and chromium (Cr) are present at elevated levels in soils in Northern Ireland. Whilst Ni, V and Cr total soil concentrations share common geological origins, their respective levels of oral bioaccessibility are influenced by different soil-geochemical factors. Oral bioaccessibility extractions were carried out on...
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...
Natural gas extracted from hydraulically fractured shale formations potentially has a big impact on the global energy landscape. However, there are concerns of potential environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing of the shale formations, particularly those related to water quality. To evaluate the potential impact of hydraulically fractured shal...
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...
The environmental quality of land can be assessed by calculating relevant threshold values, which differentiate between concentrations of elements resulting from geogenic and diffuse anthropogenic sources and concentrations generated by point sources of elements. A simple process allowing the calculation of these typical threshold values (TTVs) was...
Regional groundwater flow in high mountainous terrain is governed by a multitude of factors such as geology, topography, recharge conditions, structural elements such as fracturation and regional fault zones as well as man-made underground structures. By means of a numerical groundwater flow model, we consider the impact of deep underground tunnels...
Medical geology research has recognised a number of potentially toxic elements (PTEs), such as arsenic, cobalt, chromium, copper, nickel, lead, vanadium, uranium and zinc, known to influence human disease by their respective deficiency or toxicity. As the impact of infectious diseases has decreased and the population ages, so cancer has become the...
Potentially toxic elements (PTEs) including nickel and chromium are often present in soils overlying basalt at concentrations above regulatory guidance values due to the presence of these elements in underlying geology. Oral bioaccessibility testing allows the risk posed by PTEs to human health to be assessed; however, bioaccessibility is controlle...
Correlation analyses were conducted on nickel (Ni), vanadium (V) and zinc (Zn) oral bioaccessible fractions (BAFs) and selected geochemistry parameters to identify specific controls exerted over trace element bioaccessibility. BAFs were determined by previous research using the unified BARGE method. Total trace element concentrations and soil geoch...
Groundwater flow in hard-rock aquifers is strongly controlled by the characteristics and distribution of structural heterogeneity. A methodology for catchment-scale characterisation is presented, based on the integration of complementary, multi-scale hydrogeological, geophysical and geological approaches. This was applied to three contrasting catch...
Assessment of elevated concentrations of potentially toxic elements (PTE) in soils and the association with specific soil parent material have been the focus of research for a number of years. Risk-based assessment of potential exposure scenarios to identified elevated PTE concentrations has led to the derivation of site- and contaminant-specific s...
In the last decade, Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) has proven an efficient and rapid geophysical method for characterizing aquifers at catchment scale in diverse hydrogeological environments. However, both the accuracy and spatial resolution of results are strongly related to (1) the complexity of the geological structure under investigati...
In spite of extending over 65% of the Irish land surface, fluid movement
in Irish hard rock aquifers, and the interaction between ground- and
surface-water bodies, is poorly understood. Their management and
protection is required under the Water Framework Directive, yet there
have been few studies to date and conceptual models have not been
develop...
Assessment of elevated concentrations of potentially toxic elements (PTE) in soils and the association with specific soil parent material have been the focus of research for a numberofyears. Risk-based assessment of potential exposure scenarios to identified elevated PTE concentrations has led to the derivation of site- and contaminant-specific soil g...
Approximately 60% of the island of Ireland is underlain by complex aquifers, comprising highly heterogeneous hard rock overlain by discontinuous unconsolidated sediments of glacial or alluvial origin. Such aquifers are rarely adequate for public or industrial exploitation but remain of importance for both local water supply and contribution to surf...
In many parts of the North Atlantic region, the Permo-Triassic New Red Sandstone constitutes an important groundwater resource for drinking, agricultural and industrial water supply, thanks to relatively high transmissivity and storage properties. Such old sedimentary basins are often intruded by Paleogene volcanic dykes generally following the ext...
Anomalies in stream water concentrations for several metals (Al, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn) over the Roe Valley, Co. Londonderry, were detected in 1996. The catchment has a variety of geological formations, with base-rich and base-poor lithologies, and peat dominated headwaters. A selection of stream water sites was re-sampled (2009) to compare with the o...
Poorly productive bedrock aquifers (PPBA) are characteristic of low porosity and small specific well yield. Not even they underlay a considerable area of Ireland (up to 70%) and worldwide, the heterogeneity of these low porosity aquifers with fractured dominated groundwater flow regime makes it increasingly important to comprehend the conceptual mo...
Nitrogen has been identified by the Water Framework Directive as a major pollutant of concern in terms of water quality. Nitrogen contamination can pose a threat to human health and excessive loading into surface waters can lead to eutrophication. This research aims to investigate groundwater pathways from diffuse sources of nitrogen contamination...
The City of Belfast in the North of Ireland is underlain by the Triassic Sherwood sandstone aquifer. Increasing abstractions from the aquifer over recent years mean that quantitative assessment of the resource is becoming increasingly important. In addition to this physical pressure, the qualitative status of the groundwater body may be affected by...
To assess the contribution of accumulated winter precipitation and glacial meltwater to the recharge of deep ground water flow systems in fracture crystalline rocks, measurements of environmental isotope ratios, hydrochemical composition, and in situ parameters of ground water were performed in a deep tunnel. The measurements demonstrate the signif...
Contaminated groundwater and soils contain a complex mixture of chemicals. Their characterization provides a qualitative and quantitative approach to understanding groundwater and soild geochemistry. This article discusses the toxicity assessment of a former manufactured gas plant.
Diss. no. 14108 nat. sc. SFIT Zurich. Literaturverz.
