Hydrology and Water Quality

Surface waters are an essential renewable natural resource for both humans and the environment. Transitional, coastal and inland waters are home to a wide variety of flora and fauna, many of which provide food sources for humans, they serve as recreational areas, provide shipping/boating access to ports and offer coastal protection.  However, these waterbodies are threatened by the synergistic effects of multiple, co-occurring anthropogenic-driven environmental pressures that result in multiple, often compounds hydroclimatic events such as floods, droughts, heat waves, nutrient enrichment or spread of invasive species.

Surface inland and coastal waters act as natural storage for land-generated pollutants such as nutrient run-off from agriculture and domestic/industrial effluents, thus preventing pollution of our oceans. Over the past decades, surface water quality has been deteriorated due to increasing population, urbanization, and industrialization, which have contributed to diverse environmental pressures on the aquatic environment such as eutrophication and acidification.

We use our hydrological and hydrodynamic models to study the effects of meteorological and climatic conditions on our surface waters, and their impacts on hydrological events such as floods, droughts and extreme surface water temperatures. We also study water quality processes in surfaces waters using numerical models and Earth observation to understand transport of pollutants and aquatic ecology.

 Examples of current projects include:

• Novel approaches for forecasting multi-hazard hydrological events (StopFloods4.ie) - funded by Research Ireland
• Past and future droughts in Europe – funded by University of Galway
• Integrating remote sensing into ecosystem change and marine management processes (RS4EcoChange ) - funded by Irish Marine Institute
• Monitoring and modelling of coastal erosion in Brandon Bay – funded by Science Foundation Ireland and Irish Marine Institute
• Development of machine learning ocean forecast models – funded by Irish Marine Institute
• An exploitation of remote sensing products for water quality monitoring (AquaCop) - funded by Irish Environmental Protection Agency
• Improvement of Marine Institute operational modelling system and observation network of Irish marine waters using state-of-the-art model with data assimilation (MareDA) - funded by Irish Marine Institute
• Development of engineering solutions for climate resilient communities (CREPS) - funded by Irish Environmental Protection Agency