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Synopsis

Groundwater is worth AU$6.8 billion in gross domestic product equivalent to the Australian economy. Despite this economic importance, we do not know how the replenishment of groundwater (technically known as groundwater recharge) relates to climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña. This is increasingly important as we adapt to climate change and associated climate extremes, such as the recent rare occurrence of three consecutive wet La Niña years and this year's forecast dry and intense El Niño. This knowledge gap in understanding groundwater recharge is the focus of these honours projects, which will use caves, uniquely situated between the land surface and the groundwater, as observatories of groundwater recharge in the past, present and future. 

Aims

Honours projects are available in the general discipline area of Earth Science, and specifically groundwater hydrology, climatology and Quaternary environmental change. These include the analysis of stalagmites to obtain records of past groundwater recharge; cave hydrological investigations to understand how much rainfall is needed to generate groundwater recharge today; climatology projects that investigate the relationship between climate drivers such as ENSO and groundwater recharge events; and groundwater hydrology projects that will use groundwater models to understand groundwater recharge in the future. Projects that are related to groundwater policy and governance are also possible. The Honours project team will join a large team of researchers funded from 2025-2030 by the Australian Research Council project ‘Caves and their stalagmites: linking climate to groundwater recharge’ (see  ).

Student benefits

Honours students will enjoy the benefits of working in a large research group that is tackling an urgent and topical research question, allowing them to refine their team skills. Specialist skill training include the general areas of laboratory, field and computational modelling skills, with specialisms possible that include isotope geochemistry, field hydrological monitoring, time series data analysis and geocomputation.  

Supervisor: Prof Andy Baker, with collaborations with Pauline Treble (ANSTO, Quaternary Environments), Andrea Taschetto (UNSW, climate), Andreas Hartmann (TU Dresden, groundwater modelling), Gabriel Rau (University of Newcastle, groundwater hydrology), Marilu Melo Zurita (UNSW, environmental geography) and Cameron Holley (UNSW, groundwater policy)