EESS talk on "Alpine hydrogeology and hydrogeophysics"
Event details
| Date | 01.10.2024 |
| Hour | 12:15 › 13:15 |
| Speaker | Dr. Landon Halloran, University of Neuchâtel |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract:
The impacts of climate change on alpine headwater catchments are significant and far-reaching. Alpine headwater catchments are severely impacted by climate change. In these systems, groundwater may act as a buffer, ensuring perennial streamflow during increasingly long snow-free periods. Permafrost degradation and decreasing snow accumulation, are rapidly altering the annual dynamics of these water resources. Measuring and understanding groundwater storage changes is thus vital for current and future water resource management. Subsurface water resource monitoring is, however, extremely difficult due to logistical challenges and the low “data value” of single point measurements in highly heterogeneous and dynamic alpine catchments. Time-lapse gravimetry (TLG) is a portable and non-invasive method wherein small changes in the value of g are measured in order to infer mass distribution dynamics (i.e., water)—it may provide a solution to this major hydrological monitoring void. In this talk, I will discuss both the role of alpine groundwater and the use of hydrogeophysics to monitor water resources. The functioning of various mountain hydro-systems will be discussed, as will the principles of the TLG method. I will present studies from the alpine Vallon de Réchy (VS) and pre-alpine Röthenbach (BE) catchments. Finally, I will discuss permafrost-groundwater dynamics, and novel ways to measure them, at the Canfinal (GR) and Murtèl (GR) rock glaciers.
Biography:
The impacts of climate change on alpine headwater catchments are significant and far-reaching. Alpine headwater catchments are severely impacted by climate change. In these systems, groundwater may act as a buffer, ensuring perennial streamflow during increasingly long snow-free periods. Permafrost degradation and decreasing snow accumulation, are rapidly altering the annual dynamics of these water resources. Measuring and understanding groundwater storage changes is thus vital for current and future water resource management. Subsurface water resource monitoring is, however, extremely difficult due to logistical challenges and the low “data value” of single point measurements in highly heterogeneous and dynamic alpine catchments. Time-lapse gravimetry (TLG) is a portable and non-invasive method wherein small changes in the value of g are measured in order to infer mass distribution dynamics (i.e., water)—it may provide a solution to this major hydrological monitoring void. In this talk, I will discuss both the role of alpine groundwater and the use of hydrogeophysics to monitor water resources. The functioning of various mountain hydro-systems will be discussed, as will the principles of the TLG method. I will present studies from the alpine Vallon de Réchy (VS) and pre-alpine Röthenbach (BE) catchments. Finally, I will discuss permafrost-groundwater dynamics, and novel ways to measure them, at the Canfinal (GR) and Murtèl (GR) rock glaciers.
Biography:
Dr. Landon Halloran is a hydrogeologist and hydrogeophysicist. He holds BSc and MSc degrees in physics from the University of Victoria and McGill University in Canada, and completed his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Since 2020, he works as a senior lecturer at the Centre for Hydrogeology and Geothermics at the University of Neuchâtel. Landon is currently leading the SNSF project "RADMOGG" on alpine water resources and hydrogravimetry, which he will discuss today, and is also a grant-holder in the Horizon Europe/SERI project "FARMWISE".
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- EESS - IIE
Contact
- Prof. Meret Aeppli, Laboratory SOIL