Post Doctoral Researcher

Department of Geography

Department of Statistical Science

University College London (London, UK)

Dr. Richard G Taylor

Project Title: Groundwater dynamics and arsenic mobilisation in Bangladesh: a national-scale characterisation

Elevated concentrations of aqueous arsenic (As) in groundwater are a major public health concern in Bangladesh, West Bengal (India) and several other similar deltaic and low-lying countries in south and south-east Asia. The mobilisation of As in groundwater-fed water supplies in Bangladesh is recognised as the largest mass poisoning in history affecting more than 35 million people. Research over the last two decades has broadly answered geochemical questions relating to the origin and release of As from mineral sources, but the critical control exerted by groundwater flow and storage changes on its patchy and unpredictable distribution in drinking-water supplies remains unclear. This shortcoming is of fundamental importance as it limits our ability to predict in time and space As concentrations in groundwater. Moreover, intensive groundwater abstraction for irrigation to sustain dry-season Boro rice cultivation in Bangladesh has, over the last 40 years, altered natural pathways of recharge and discharge transporting As from release hotspots to sites of abstraction. There is, at present, a range of conflicting hypotheses regarding the role of groundwater abstraction in mobilising As. Each hypothesis has been developed at the village-scale and none has been tested at the national-scale. Furthermore, it is also unclear how climate change (rainfall intensity and shift in south Asian monsoon) will affect groundwater storage dynamics by changing recharge and thus future As pathways in groundwater supplies. My research investigates how changes in spatio-temporal storage of shallow groundwater in Bangladesh due to abstraction for irrigation and climate change influence groundwater dynamics and As mobilisation in drinking water supplies.

2010-2011 Wingate Scholarship from the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, UK

2007-2010 Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award (Doctoral research) by EPSRC, UK

2007 Intern Geologist with ConocoPhillips, Houston, Texas, USA

2001-2003 Research Hydrogeologist LDEO-Columbia University Arsenic Research Project in Bangladesh

2010-2011 Wingate Scholarship (£9,963), Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation (UK)

2008-2010 Chadwick Trust Travelling Fellowships (£4,863)

2007-2010 EPSRC Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award (£90,000)