Hydro-g: Monitoring Groundwater Resources using Low-Cost Microgravity Sensors

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Groundwater plays a major role in supplying water to millions of people globally. Across the UK, groundwater contributes >75% of water supplies in some counties and provides crucial baseflow contributions to streams and wetlands, thereby sustaining flow regimes and ecosystem health, respectively. At the same time as water resources are threatened by climate extremes, water demand continues to increase with competing demands from domestic, industrial, and agricultural sectors. Thus, sustainable management of groundwater resources is crucial for communities' resilience and economic development. Cost-effective groundwater monitoring is a key challenge. Installing and maintaining borehole networks is often costly and impractical due to lack of land access. The recent breakthrough invention of a 'gravimeter-on-a-chip' using a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) provides an exciting new sensor to overcome these limitations at a fraction of the cost. The project will evaluate the feasibility of new MEMS gravimeter technology as a low-cost non-intrusive method for monitoring groundwater storage fluctuations and for determining key aquifer parameters in UK bedrock aquifers on a relevant scale for catchment-scale water resource management. The project will advance the generic scientific understanding regarding the hydrogeological application of microgravity methods and establish the new low-cost sensor technology in the field of hydrogeological studies for the first time.