During the month of May I was lucky enough to travel to Australia to search for a new groundwater resource for the Aboriginal people of South Australia. We were funded by Geoscientist Without Borders (GWB), an organization whose goal is to provide researchers an opportunity to work in areas where their results will directly benefit an under privileged community. As part of the project we worked closely with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). CSIRO is a research organization funded by the federal government of Australia, the closest analogy would be our National Laboratories.
We drove for about 20 hours to get to our field location on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands, which is located in the north east corner of South Australia. We had decided that the best way to search for a new groundwater resources was to use Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Time-domain Electromagnetics (TEM). These two methods are non-invasive and only require wire laid out in a loop on the surface. NMR is directly sensitive to the amount of water in the subsurface and TEM tells us about the conductivity structure of the Earth. The goal is to be able to image water and determine if the water is briny or fresh.
This was an extremely cool experience for me not only from a scientific point of view but from a cultural point of view. I got to work closely with the CSIRO team and learn more about NMR and TEM. I will be taking this knowledge and field experience back to Wyoming and incorporating NMR into my research on fractured bedrock aquifers. Culturally it was a real eye opener for me. I had the privilege of being shown around by a ~70 year old Aboriginal man named Wijiti George. It was interesting because there was no modern infrastructure on the APY lands until the 1990s. So Wijiti was living off the land well before white man came and helped set up infrastructure such as water wells. It was interesting, even though the language barrier was difficult, to hear about the importance of water and the role it plays in their culture. Their entire culture was based around knowing where you could find water. Water was commonly found in pools on the surface or hidden within granite caves, commonly called rock holes. These rock holes have a very specific symbol in the paintings and can be found in almost every painting!
That’s just a brief overview, if you want to read more we kept a blog of most of our experiences. This blog contains entries from not only me but two other collaborators of the project. To navigate to the blog click here or copy and paste the link below into your browser:
http://gwbaustralia.blogspot.com.au
