A contingent of environmental scientists led by Professor John Dodson, Head of ANSTO’s Institute for Environmental Research, will go to Canberra next week in a bid to enlighten selected MP’s about the unique role of nuclear science in monitoring and understanding our environment, particularly in key areas like water management and climate change.
Professor Dodson said it was a great opportunity to inform Australian decision-makers about the importance of ANSTO’s environmental work.
“Many people don’t actually know that ANSTO has a strong environment focus, so it’s a chance for us to tell people about our work,” said Professor Dodson. “For example, in understanding how our climate has evolved over time by mapping climate patterns over hundreds and thousands of years, we can discover the full range of system responses when thinking about future climate change.
This is just one of the many areas of environmental expertise we have at ANSTO.
“Understanding climate change can be done in several ways, such as analysing air bubbles in ice cores to find out the age and quantity of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane and how they correlate with the climate of the time,” he explained. “Or we can track the movement of ice sheets during certain climate periods by collecting rock samples and dating them.
“We use nuclear techniques to do all this, and ANSTO has powerful instruments such as particle accelerators to help us do the science. Without these tools, we could not produce rigorous results,” he said.
Professor Dodson’s group also uses nuclear tools to understand how human activities affect groundwater, rivers, marine and freshwater ecosystems. For example ANSTO has been conducting a water quality monitoring program along the Darling River, where nuclear techniques were used to identify evaporation and groundwater discharge into the river during drought conditions.
“This work identified the presence of saline groundwater flowing into the Darling River, which happens when the river levels drop, as old saline groundwater is present in aquifer systems throughout western NSW,” Professor Dodson explained. “This is bad for the river because it’s the only fresh water supply to the region and if saline water continues to flow into it then agriculture and river life will suffer.”
Nuclear tools have also been used for over 10 years to measure air pollution in regional centres of Australia.
Aerosol samples collected from a number of sites are studied using ion beam analysis provided by one of ANSTO’s on-site particle accelerators. The analysis allows ANSTO to determine where the pollution is coming from and to assess its potential impact on health and the environment.
“Once we are able to pinpoint the pollution culprits, we can at least look at ways as to how pollution can be reduced and managed,” concluded Professor Dodson.
Published: 14/03/2008