Research

Environmental Research: Isotope Hydrology

We study the influence of climate change, land-use land cover, and other disruptions on large rivers and groundwater resources. We try to address fundamental questions such as concentration-discharge relationships, chemical fluxes from land to ocean, sources, pathways, and controlling factors of dissolved constituents in rivers and groundwater using isotopic tracers. Some key findings include:

  • Uranium in the Ganga Basin alluvial aquifer system is geogenic in nature with bicarbonate complexation controlling its enrichment
  • Dynamic sediment-water interactions in rivers possibly modify dissolved 87Sr/86Sr
  • High resilience of heavy metals in large rivers

Publications

  • (8) Roy, N*, Sen I.S., Boral, S., Shukla T., Velu, V. Isotope hydrograph separation reveals rainfall on the glaciers will enhance ice meltwater discharge to the Himalayan rivers (2023). Water Resource Research (under revision).

  • (7) Shaifullah*, Sen I.S. A four-component mixing model reveals an early onset of snow meltwater runoff in the headwaters of River Ganga. Journal of Hydrology, Volume 628, January 2024, 130473, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.130473

  • (6) Nizam S*., Dutta, S‡., Sen, I.S. Geogenic controls on the high levels of uranium in alluvial aquifers of the Ganga Basin; (2022) Applied Geochemistry, 143, 105374, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeochem.2022.105374

  • (5) Boral, S.,* Peucker-Ehrenbrink, B., Hemingway, J.D., Sen, I.S., Galy, V., Fiske, G.J. Controls on Short-Term Dissolved 87Sr/86Sr Variations in Large Rivers: Evidence from the Ganga–Brahmaputra; (2021) Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 566, art. no. 116958, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2021.116958

  • (4) Shukla, T.,** Sen, I.S., Boral, S.,* Sharma, S. A Time-Series Record during COVID-19 Lockdown Shows the High Resilience of Dissolved Heavy Metals in the Ganga River; (2021) Environmental Science and Technology Letters, 8 (4), pp. 301-306, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00982

  • (3) Boral, S.,* Sen, I.S., Tripathi, A., Sharma, B., Dhar, S. Tracking Dissolved Trace and Heavy Metals in the Ganga River from Source to Sink: A Baseline to Judge Future Changes; (2020) Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 21 (10), art. no. e2020GC009203, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GC009203 [Research spotlight: Shultz, D. (2020), Tracking trace elements in the Ganga River, Eos, 101, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EO150385]

  • (2) Sen, I.S., Boral, S.,* Ranjan, S.,‡ Tandon, S.K. Small but Important: The Role of Small Floodplain Tributaries to River Nutrient Budgets; (2018) ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, 2 (1), pp. 64-71. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.7b00112

  • (1) Boral, S.,* Sen, I.S., Ghosal, D., Peucker-Ehrenbrink, B., Hemingway, J.D. Stable Water Isotope Modeling Reveals Spatio-Temporal Variability of Glacier Meltwater Contributions to Ganges River headwaters; (2019) Journal of Hydrology, 577, art. no. 123983. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.123983
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