Risk assessment for groundwater flooding in Ireland : use of hydroecological indicators

You certainly know Guinness. But have you heard of turloughs? Probably not, yet this is another Irish speciality! Turloughs are seasonal lakes fed predominantly by groundwater, that flood and empty over the course of the year.
Why study them? Ted McCormack has two good reasons for this! First, they host a unique flora and fauna. McCormack leads field work to assess how concentrations of nutrients, which are essential for life, are influenced by water-level fluctuations in turloughs. The other motivation of McCormack's PhD is that turloughs may flood when intense rainfall increases groundwater levels. McCormack develops a model aimed at simulating the risk of turlough flooding depending on rainfall. His results might be useful for the design of optimal land-use policies, beneficial for both local farmers and biodiversity conservation.