Solving groundwater management questions with numerical models and environmental tracers

PhD opportunity at CSIRO Land and Water, Adelaide and Flinders University, Adelaide supervisors: Luk Peeters, Dirk Mallants, Okke Batelaan

Future success of sustainable groundwater management is dependent upon our ability to resolve key groundwater management questions, such as determining a sustainable level of water take for irrigation or assessing the impact of mine development on water resources. This requires a thorough understanding of the groundwater system as a basis for developing reliable predictive groundwater models. Environmental tracers continue to be one of the essential tools to date groundwater and are invaluable in understanding groundwater flow systems. Although tracers have been successfully used to derive recharge rates, quantify aquifer interconnectivity, or determine fluxes involved in surface/groundwater exchange, they are rarely used directly to constrain groundwater models.

This 3 year study will explore different strategies to integrate environmental tracer data, and the understanding derived from them, in regional groundwater models. This will enable to quantify the availability of tracer data to reduce predictive uncertainty. These strategies can range from using tracer-inferred groundwater flow rates as constraint in uncertainty analysis of groundwater flow models to directly constraining the groundwater model in an inverse analysis based on the observed tracer concentrations. The latter will require solving the advective-dispersive solute transport equation. Crucial in the quantification of the reduction in predictive uncertainty are advanced mathematical and statistical concepts including probabilistic Bayesian uncertainty analysis and model emulation techniques.

For this project we are looking for a PhD student with a firm grasp of hydrogeology and keen to learn how to interpret and use environmental tracer data in simulation modelling. The candidate is able and eager to create various numerical flow and transport models of different complexity and is willing to take a deep dive into the mathematical and statistical concepts underlying model emulation, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis.

The PhD student will be based at CSIRO in Adelaide where he/she has the support of a team of experienced groundwater modellers, access to high performance computing facilities and access to one of the best equipped environmental isotope laboratories in the southern hemisphere. The PhD student will be enrolled in the PhD program at Flinders University and will be also supported by a supervisor from Flinders University.

While based at CSIRO, the PhD student will have the opportunity to engage with other students at the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) at Flinders University. NCGRT bundles the best groundwater research in Australia. It is led and supported by a strong group of groundwater academics at Flinders University who have an excellent track record in field based groundwater research and groundwater modelling.

Interested candidates with a relevant Honours or Master degree in sciences or engineering are invited to submit their resume and academic transcripts, along with a cover letter motivating their interest in the study and summarising their research experience to Luk Peeters (luk.peeters@csiro.au) before 30 May 2016.