Earth System Change

Climate and the Environment:

Observatory Ireland - Earth System Change focusses on constraining Earth system processes and causes and consequences of past, present and future climatic and environmental change.

Research activities are focused on the following areas:

Past environmental and carbon cycle response to rapid climate change
Land cover, management and climate impacts on radiative forcing
Silicate weathering in deep and modern times

Connected Waters:

Groundwater and surface waters are both vital sources of freshwater for humanity and farming. Ireland’s freshwater resources are increasingly under threat due to population growth, urbanisation, industrialisation, agricultural intensification, and climate change, placing increased burdens on water quantity and quality from a range of contaminants. iCRAG is addressing a pressing need to develop catchment-scale models for prediction of quantity and quality impacts on groundwater and surface water under different land use and/or climate change scenarios

Research activities are focussed on the following areas:

Long term monitoring with innovative methodologies to spatially and temporally characterise water and contaminant flows in catchments.
Modelling & visualization of water resources as well as geogenic and anthropogenic contaminants in Irish waters
Use of Earth Observation data to increase the spatial and temporal data collected for the instrumented catchments, as well as providing automated early flood warning systems.

Environmental Geoscience:

The iCRAG-GSI Environmental Geoscience PhD Programme addresses global challenges in areas of climate change, climate action, geoscience & health, soils, water and marine geosciences.

Research projects include:

Spatiotemporal multiscale Modelling of Antimicrobial Resistance in The Irish subsurface Environment (SMARTIE).
The impact of organic matter on heavy metal bioavailability in urban soils: experimental and field-based approaches.
Assessing the response of the AMOC during times of abrupt climate change.
TARGETing crystallisation for enhanced Carbon Capture and Storage (TARGET-CCS).
Chemosynthetic pathways to increased carbon dioxide sequestration and improved productivity in soil.
Characteristics of slow-moving submarine landslides.
The link between stress, fluid flow, and subduction dynamics: Implications for offshore geohazards and resource development.
Heavy metal analysis of peat using ETV-ICP-OES: A highly efficient technique for direct solid sampling.

Geomarine Environment:

iCRAG is undertaking targeted marine research on met-ocean climatology, biogeochemistry, marine sediments for climate proxies, and passive and bioacoustics that builds upon research and sensor development and complements or extends the work of partner research organizations in Ireland.

Research activities are focused on the following areas: