Staff profile

Andrew Taylor is a hydrogeologist in the Groundwater Characterisation and Management research group.

His primary research activities include integrating the analysis and interpretation of hydraulic, hydrogeochemical and environmental tracer data for characterising and understanding groundwater systems.

Andrew has a background in soil and groundwater hydrology with 13 years of experience in field and desktop evaluation of hydrogeological systems throughout Australia. His research interests include vadose zone hydrology, the coupling of environmental tracers, hydrogeochemistry and hydraulics for characterising the scale of groundwater flow systems, quantifying groundwater flow processes (recharge, throughflow and discharge) characterising the nature of groundwater – surface water interactions, and understanding inter-aquifer exchange. In addition, Andrew is using the new knowledge gained by the collection of new data to constrain the inputs and boundary conditions for water balance and risk assessment models.

Recently, Andrew has been involved in a number of regional scale groundwater assessments applying novel drilling techniques, as well as the application of environmental tracers and geophysics to characterise hydrogeological systems for economic development in data sparse regions. Andrew has been fortunate to collaborate with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig Germany, where Andrew gained valuable insight and experience in to the application of direct-push (DP) technology for characterising surficial shallow aquifers. This work has led to Andrew pioneering the use of DP technology in Australia for characterising groundwater systems, enabling new sampling techniques in remote regions with limited infrastructure and evaluating salinity in the landscape.

Currently, Andrew is leading the groundwater hydrology activities for the Northern Australia Water Resource Assessment (NAWRA) and the Norfolk Island Water Resource Assessment (NIWRA). In remote data sparse regions, Andrew has led numerous groundwater projects including the groundwater components of the Flinders and Gilbert Agricultural Resource Assessment (FGARA) and the Goyder Facilitating Long-term Outback Water Solutions projects.

Andrew has 74 publications including 7 journal papers, 24 conference papers and 43 technical reports with 151 citations (Google Scholar, h-index 6).