Hydrogeology

Live depends on water. Save drinking water will be one of the major challenges in this century. Beside quantitative problems, groundwater contamination is a major environmental concern. Contamination can be due to inorganic, organic or biological sources. Hydrogeology involves all processes from groundwater recharge to discharge in springs and rivers or oceans. It includes the fade and behaviour of contaminants and trace elements in subsurface aquatic environments. Within the Department of Environmental Geosciences at Vienna University we cover projects from groundwater recharge models, hydrogeological models, isotop hydrogeology, artificial recharge of groundwater, groundwater salinisation and modelling of groundwater flow by numerical codes (e.g. Modflow, Feflow). Regional groundwater studies are currently carried out in Vienna and Lower Austria. We also study the behaviour of oraganic and inorganic substances linked to the leaching of contaminated materials, recycling material, mining activities or colloidal transport of trace substances.

Environmental Pollutants

During daily life we are often exposed to a large variety of inorganic and organic pollutants. Carbon-derived compounds represent the largest group of contaminants in the environment. Compounds like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) or the gasoline additive methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE) are widely spread in areas influenced by human activities. The partitioning of organic pollutants in the environmental soil-water-air-system determines the bioavailability of contaminants of different toxicity to organisms. The processes that reduce their mass or mobility like sorption, biodegradation or abiotic degradation are of major interest.  Sorption processes significantly alter the emission pattern, i.e. the fingerprint of the contamination. The applied techniques to identify the source are environmental forensic methods. At present the main fields of research are the identification of emission sources by fingerprinting, sorption of PAHs and EDC on heterogeneous geosorbents as well as the behaviour of iron and sulphur phases on the mobility of heavy metals.

Nanogeoscience

Particles in the nanoscale (colloids) are abundant in all environmental compartments. These nanophases are composed of natural organic matter (e.g. humic substances), are biota itself (viruses, bacteria incl. pathogens), inorganic particles (clays, oxides or carbonates) or are man-made originating either from engineering (nanotechnology) or from wear/combustion/corrosion. They span a broad size range from some fractions of a nanometer to several micrometers. Hence a natural colloidal system typically consists of a wide variety of macromolecules and particles. This heterogeneity poses high demands on the analytical equipment and analysis strategy. On the other side engineered nanoparticles are typically well defined but occur in extremely low concentrations what makes them difficult to distinguish from natural ones. Nanoparticles are involved in natural processes as soil development and nutrient cycling but can also act as vehicles of contaminant transport, alter the bioavailability of substances and hence their toxicity. Especially in nanotechnology the proposed future market of several hundred billion US dollars will result in a widespread emission of specially designed nanoparticles into the environment. Today virtually nothing is known about the behaviour of those materials. Nevertheless it is clear already that those materials have characteristics different to those of the bulk materials due to their large surface areas and that some may penetrate the skin, cell membranes and the blood-brain barrier. The future research of the Nanogeosciences at the Vienna University aims at three main topics: Characterization - Environmental Processes - Behavior of Engineered Nanoparticles.

Geo Hazards (Geohazards and Georisk Research)

High mountain regions worldwide are highly sensitive to climate change, and therefore mountain hazards increase in number and magnitude. In the Himalayas as well as the Tienshan - Pamir - Hindukush Range mountain hazards affect the Asian- and Central Asian countries and their population more severely as they are exposed to a number of hazardous processes such as floods, avalanches, rockslides, and earthquakes. In the worst case a chain of reactions increases the magnitude of a damage e.g. if an earthquake simultaneously triggers both landslides and glacier lake outburst floods. As some rivers flow from one neighboring country to another, transboundary effects of floods should be taken into account. Glacier lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are catastrophic outburst from ice-dammed or moraine-dammed glacial lakes. Assessment of georisks is an important further step in the risk management process. For the high mountain environment we can only attempt to reduce the risk – not the geohazard, either controlling the exposure of human settlements, energy supply and infrastructure to hazards or reducing their vulnerability. Within the working group on “Applied Geology, Remote Sensing & GIS” we investigate the high mountain environmental system in order to reduce the georisks by providing integrated hazard zonation plans or the installation of Early Warning Systems (EWS). An EWS is a data based and/or knowledge based system to warn residents and officials of impending floodwaters on major rivers so they can take action and prepare themselves before serious flooding occurs. The use of such an integrated system is manyfold. It records the meteorologic and hydrologic conditions of the high mountain catchments, it monitors the outburst flood itself and it provides warning to those downstream that a GLOF has occurred.