2009 Henry Darcy Lecture Series - Peter Cook (part 1)
Channel: National Ground Water Association
Date: 27/06/2011

"Environmental Tracers in Modern Hydrogeology: Reducing Uncertainty in Groundwater Flow Estimation" was the title of Cook's Darcy Lecture. Environmental tracers can reduce uncertainty of hydrogeological predictions in all environments, but are particularly valuable in highly heterogeneous systems, where spatial variations in aquifer hydraulic conductivity may range over several orders of magnitude, and so hydraulic approaches are inherently uncertain. Despite the rapid growth of environmental tracers during the past few decades and their adoption by the research community, they are not widely used in routine hydrogeological assessments. This lecture illustrated the potential of environmental tracers through illustration using field sites in North America