Department Water Resources and Drinking Water

Main Focus

Environmental Isotopes Group
The main activities of the Environmental Isotopes Group are high sensitive transient tracer analytics, the application of environmental tracer methods in groundwater and lakes and numerical methods of data analysis and modelling of aquatic systems.

Drinking Water Chemistry Group
The research focuses on oxidation and disinfection processes and photochemical transformations in drinking water, wastewater and natural aquatic systems.

Hydrogeology Group
We work on field and model based methods in hydrogeology with special emphasis on investigation, monitoring and numerical process modelling. Our research foci are interactions between ground- and surface water, alpine and urban hydrogeology.

Contaminant  Hydrology Group
Organic pollutants: Investigation of bio(chemical) transformation in contaminated aquifers with stable isotope fractionation, and hydrology.Heavy metals: Surveys of river floodplains in Southeast Asia, risk assessment, mitigation.

Molecular Environmental Geochemistry Group
We study the geochemistry of major and trace elements in natural and engineered systems from a molecular-level perspective, with the aim to relate processes at the macroscopic level to distinct chemical species and their biogeochemical reactivity.

Environmental Inorganic Geochemistry Group
We study biogeochemical cycles of health-impacting trace elements from microscopic to global scales. Our current focus lies on the environmental behavior of selenium in the frame of the SNFS funded project: "The global biogeochemical cycle of selenium: sources, fluxes and the influence of climate".

Subsurface Environmental Processes Group

We are a joint group between W+T Department (EAWAG) and the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (ETH Zurich). The main objective of our research is to quantify the links between the physical heterogeneity of subsurface environments, including porous and fractured media, the heterogeneity of the resulting flow fields, and the effective transport behavior, including solute dispersion, mixing, and (bio-)chemical reactions. The environmental and industrial applications of our research include studying the impact of climate change on groundwater resources, remediation of polluted sites, geothermal energy or geological sequestration of CO2, among others.

Tracer Hydrogeology Group
The Tracer Hydrogeology Group focuses on the development and application of state-of-the-art tracer methods to improve the conceptual and quantitative understanding of groundwater processes and surface water-groundwater interactions in diverse environments. We also investigate how different data types can be used to calibrate integrated surface-subsurface hydrological models (ISSHM) and help make improved predictions of the behavior of hydrogeological systems under anthropogenic and climatic impacts.