Dalhousie Groundwater Lab

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People on project:

The Dalhousie Groundwater Lab is part of the Centre for Water Resources Studies and the Department of Civil and Resource Engineering at Dalhousie. A broad range of surface and groundwater quantity and quality issues are studied, but the focus is on coastal water resources. The research is quantitative with a combination of field work and modeling.

Research Areas:

Research areas include coastal hydrogeology, groundwater and river temperature, and cold region hydrology and hydrogeology.

Research Group:

Dr. Barret Kurylyk

Dr. Barret Kurylyk leads the Dalhousie Groundwater Lab. Dr. Kurylyk is an Assistant Professor in Dalhousie's Department of Civil and Resource Engineering and the Centre for Water Resources Studies. His research interests include coastal and submarine hydrology and hydrogeology, cold regions hydrology, environmental heat transfer, groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and climate change impacts on hydrology. Dr. Kurylyk is also Secretary for the Canadian Geophysical Union Hydrology Section and Associate Editor for Hydrogeology Journal. Before coming to Dalhousie in 2017, he was an NSERC and Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary (2014-2016) and a Research Associate at McMaster University (2016-2017).

Lab Openings

The lab is always recruiting and has openings for talented people who are passionate about research themes aligned with the lab's. If you are interested in MSc, PhD, or PDF positions, please see the Research page to understand the broader research program and some specific projects we are engaged in. Send a detailed email to Barret Kurylyk: (barret.kurylyk@dal.ca) specifically describing what themes you are interested in, why you want to work in the lab, and why you would be a good fit. Open positions are often posted to Dr. Barret Kurylyk's Twitter account (@DalHydro).

Postdoctoral Fellows

Dr. Joseph Tamborski

Joe is an Ocean Frontier Institute International Postdoctoral Fellow, working between the Centre for Water Resources Studies at Dalhousie University and the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Joseph is currently studying the hydrogeochemistry of salt marshes in the North Atlantic (Bay of Fundy and Cape Cod) using heat and radium isotopes as seawater circulation tracers. He completed his PhD thesis on submarine groundwater discharge to Long Island Sound and spent his past postdoc studying submarine groundwater inputs to the French Mediterranean Sea.

Graduate Students

Farnaz Motaman

Farnaz received her MS degree from Shiraz University in Iran. Her MSc thesis focused on time-dependent analysis of unsaturated seepage in sea dikes using a meshless method (RBF-DQ method). As a present PhD student, she is leading a project investigating bacteria transport in coastal watersheds. This project mainly focuses on developing an integrated surface-subsurface numerical model to study bacteria transport in the groundwater, surface water, and harbor. In her spare time she enjoys reading, spending time with family, gardening, photography and outdoor activities such as hiking.

Jason KarisAllen

Jason KarisAllen graduated from Dalhousie University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Environmental Engineering and from Saint Mary's University in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science. Jason MASc thesis will explore the temperature patterns found within anthropologically perturbed estuarine environments over tidal and dial cycles. This work will involve a combination of field data acquisition (drones, loggers, fibre-optic Distributed Temperature Sensing) and numerical heat modelling. Findings will be used to assess the vulnerability of these ecosystems within the context of a warming climate.

Ray Craddock

Ray is an Earth Sciences graduate from Dalhousie University. His MASc research focuses on utilizing multiple hydrogeological tracers to access groundwater-borne harbour contamination on Mabou, Noav Scotia. Mabou has persistent bacterial contamination, and an economy strongly reliant on the health of its harbour and adjacent beaches. Field methods include the use of piezometers. thermal imagery, temperature-depth profiles, and artificial sweeteners. Field data will be studied through the application of numerical models.

Hanzhi Zhu

Hanzhi is an international MEng student from China with a Bachelor's Degree in Groundwater Science and Engineering ( Guillin University of Technology). Her MEng thesis addresses the dynamics of freshwater lenses ( freshwater aquifiers) underlying small islands and the impacts of island geometry and sea-level rise. She is using the intergrated finite element model, SUTRA, to simulate coupled density-driven flow and transport dynamics.

Undergraduate Students and Interns

There occasionally are positions for undergraduate students. Please email Barret Kurylyk (Barret.Kurylyk@dal.ca) with your interests. There is one opening for summer 2019 for someone with electronics expertise/interest to aid in sensor design.

Past Students

Megan Ramirez: June-August 2018

Megan is a Mitacs Globalink Intern from Universidad Internacional near Mexico City. She is developing and applying multi-level stream- and pond-bed temperature sensor rods for tracing vertical groundwater fluxes. Her primary field site is Sable Island where groundwater-sourced ponds are rapidly shrinking. She is using 1DTempPro, VFLUX2, and Flux-LM for her data analysis.

Contact Information

Email: barret.kurylyk@dal.ca

Phone: 902-494-4325

Website: https://www.dal.ca/sites/groundwater.html

Sable Island

Dr. Kurylyk testing sensors