Groundwater Tracers and Quantitative Hydrogeology

A meeting convened by the Hydrogeological Group of The Geological Society to encompass both natural and artificial groundwater tracers and examine how they can be used for quantitative understanding of hydrogeology. This meeting is of relevance to disciplines across hydrogeology and hydrology, and to academics and applied practitioners alike.

The meeting will also incorporate the 2009 National Ground Water Association (USA) Darcy Lecture to be given by Dr. Peter Cook. The title of Dr Cook’s Darcy Lecture is, "Environmental Tracers in Modern Hydrogeology: Reducing Uncertainty in Ground Water Flow Estimation". For further info on the National Ground Water Association and the Darcy Lecture series see this link.

Pre-registration is required for this meeting. To register, please send an email entitled ‘Groundwater Tracers and Quantitative Hydrogeology‘ to Carole Sharratt, BGS (cesh@bgs.ac.uk) indicating: (i) name, (ii) affiliation, (iii) Geol Soc membership number, (iv) Wine reception attendance (yes/no). Please register by Friday 23 October to facilitate catering.

Registration costs: Members £20.00, Non-members £40.00, Students £5, £10.00 for wine reception following the meeting. Pay on the door. Coffee, tea and biscuits provided.

No charge is made for attending the Darcy Lecture itself.

09:45 Registration and Coffee

Morning session – Artificial Tracers

10:25 Welcome by Chair (Nick Woodman)

10:30 Investigating attenuation and flowpath characteristics using artificial tracers – Louise Maurice (BGS)

10:55 Tracing the occurrence of catchment-scale Karst in the Hertfordshire Chalk using bacteriophage – Simon Cook (University College London)

11:20 Laboratory and Field Experiments on the Movement of Viruses In Sandstone Groundwaters – John Tellam (University of Birmingham)

11:45-12:10 Coffee Break

12:10 Combining tracer testing with age-dating to understand regional flow and solute transport in the Yorkshire Corallian – Aidan Foley (University College London)

12:35 The architecture of recharge in unsaturated fractured rock– Tim Atkinson (University College London)

13:00-14:00 Lunch

Afternoon session – Natural Tracers

(Chair Daren Gooddy)

14:00 Award of Whitaker Medal to Professor John Barker (Willy Burgess, Chair of Hydrogeology Group)

14:15 Chalk catchment transit time: unresolved issues – George Darling (BGS)

14:45 Sulfate stable isotopes as indigenous tracers of solute sources in groundwaters – Simon Bottrell (University of Leeds)

15:15-16:00 Tea Break

16:00 Darcy Lecture "Environmental Tracers in Modern Hydrogeology: Reducing Uncertainty in Ground Water Flow Estimation" (Peter Cook CSIRO)

17:00 Meeting Close and Wine reception

Abstracts for the meeting can be downloaded here (365 KB PDF)