SMI Seminar Series on 'Noble gases - Key environmental tracers to study regional hydrogeological processes'
Event Details
- Date:
- Tuesday, 13 October 2015
- Time:
- 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Room:
- Level 7 Visualisation Lab
- UQ Location:
- Sir James Foots Building (St Lucia)
- Event category(s):
Event Contact
- Name:
- Miss Hannah Fry
- Phone:
- 3346 4241
- Email:
- h.fry@uq.edu.au
- Org. Unit:
- Sustainable Minerals Institute
Event Description
- Full Description:
- The Sustainable Minerals Institute will host Sébastien Lamontagne, Team Leader – Environmental, CSIRO Land and Water, who will present a seminar on 'Noble gases - Key environmental tracers to study regional hydrogeological processes'. Stable and radioactive noble gases in aquifers can provide unique information about complex hydrogeological processes. Until recently, the application of noble gases in hydrogeological studies in Australia was limited by the lack of facilities to measure or expertise to interpret them. CSIRO’s Environmental Tracer Laboratory is currently developing new facilities to measure stable noble gases (He, Ne, Ar, Kr and Xe) and also rarer radioactive noble gases (39Ar, 85Kr and 81Kr) in water samples. Noble gases have many uses in hydrogeology. Stable noble gases can evaluate recharge processes in groundwater systems, such as past temperature (i.e., climate) at the time of recharge. Helium-4 accumulates in aquifers over time by radioactive decay of U-bearing minerals and is an ideal tracer to evaluate regional groundwater baseflow and flow through aquitards. Radioactive noble gases have seen limited applications to date in Australia but would enable to either ‘age’ groundwater at time-scales not covered by ‘traditional’ tracers (14C, 36Cl) or without some of the limitations of other tracers (decay of CFCs in some aquifers, etc).
A brief overview of environmental tracer techniques in hydrogeology will be provided and recent applications of noble gases in the Australian context presented. Potential future applications for radioactive noble gases will be discussed.
Dr Lamontagne has been involved in environmental flows and groundwater – surface water interaction research for the last 15 years. He currently leads CSIRO’s Environmental Tracers and Applications Team, which is developing novel techniques to study complex hydrogeological processes in regional aquifers, such as flow through aquitards, using noble gases.
Directions to UQ
- Google Map:
-
- Directions:
- St Lucia Campus | Gatton campus.
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