Dan Sharpe: The Importance of Quaternary Mapping in Global Development

After a busy summer of various field projects, Dan Sharpe is back and starts this terms blog posts by looking at the importance of Quaternary mapping... 

Quaternary mapping is a technique not taught on many undergraduate geoscience courses, however it is one that is vital in the field of global development. Mapping Quaternary deposits can tell us whether an area of ground is unstable, problematic (in terms of future development) or a good aquifer and thus is crucial in construction and planning, along with natural hazard protection and water resource management.

Quaternary is the name given to the final epochs of the Cenozoic era; the Pleistocene, the Holocene and the slightly more controversial current Anthropocene (an informal term for the period of human interference on our planet). In other words, roughly the past 2.5-2.6 million years (a tiny fraction of the 4.54 billion years the Earth has existed). Mapping these deposits show the levels of interference of surface processes such as glaciation, desertification, floods and even surface geochemistry and can be a crucial component in understanding a hazard or resource.

Natural Hazards

The type of surface deposit can be a very important control on the intensity of a natural hazard. In particular, the porosity of a soil can seriously affect the flood risk in an area, and mapping this can highlight areas under threat. In developing nations, flooding proves a huge setback in physical development and loss of lives - particularly in southern Asia with the presence of the El Nino and frequent typhoons. Understanding and mapping areas at risk can not only reduce the loss of life during periods of flooding but also mitigate the damage to infrastructure, meaning that there is less need to repair but focus can instead be placed on development.

Marco Dormino/ UNDP

Indeed soils and more specifically soil porosity and consolidation play an important role in other hazards too. The Haiti earthquake of 2010 killed over 300,000 people. One of the major problems in the area was that many of the poorly constructed homes were built on unconsolidated land that liquified during shaking (for details see this information sheet). Liquefaction occurs in almost every earthquake on some scale but in this example an area large enough to cause serious harm was affected, and thus large scale failure of buildings and roads occurred. Understanding the ground beneath which construction is taking place is therefore crucial in aiding the development of nations susceptible to natural hazards.

Water Resources

Sub-surface characteristics can be crucial in the trapping or release of water, particularly precipitation. Mapping quaternary deposits will determine levels of vegetation and type of ground. Levels of surface run-off or infiltration can be mapped as a result. Potential traps may be identified and provide important information on where water will hold underground and where a resource can be exploited. This is an increasingly vital skill in developing nations, particularly Africa. The World Bank Institute (WBI) released a statement in 1999 saying:

“... over the past few decades, use of water has increased, and in many places water availability is falling to crisis levels. More than eighty countries, with forty percent of the world’s population, are already facing water shortages.”

This is a trend that has not stopped and thus it is crucial that geoscience courses include techniques to find water resources, and more generally gaining a greater understanding of near-surface deposits from recent geological history. 

Quaternary mapping is not yet fully integrated into many courses at universities, but is an increasingly important technique when using the earth sciences to aid in global development.

Blog Watch

What does a toilet, higher education and
migration have in common?
(Source: Wiki)

A few blog posts have caught my attention in recent days. Each of the three blogs listed below talks about something over than geoscience (sanitation and access to toilets, higher education in war-torn Afghanistan, and migration) however they are all linked to situations where geoscientists may be involved. The need for geoscientists to be able to communicate with multiple interested parties, from different backgrounds, is something we have championed on this blog and through the GfGD network. Geoscience can't improve the world in it's own bubble - but alongside health experts, education experts and law experts (amongst many others). Hopefully these few articles will give you a taste of the much broader context of geoscience:

**Flushing money down the toilet?**

The need for decent sanitation facilities across the world is staggering. An estimated 2.5billion people lack access to a basic toilet. In between addressing malaria, TB and other killer diseases, Bill Gates has been trying to re-invent the toilet - you can read more on the Tearfund 'Just Policy' blog.

**Can Afghan Universities Recover from War, Taliban and Neglect?**

This blog, on the Science magazine page, looks at the role and future of higher education in Afghanistan. 

**Crossing borders to escape natural calamities is no easy option**

An analysis of the legality of crossing international borders when faced with a natural catastrophe. This article was posted last week on the Guardian 'Poverty Matters' Blog.

Friday Photo (43) - Latrine

TANZANIA: LATRINE
This newly constructed latrine at a school in Tanzania means that school children can  use a safe, clean sanitary facility - and waste can be prevented from entering drinking water.
(c) Geology for Global Development 2012

Training Opportunity: Groundwater Monitoring and Drilling Supervision

Hydrogeologists Without Borders, in collaboration with REDR and Cranfield University, are running a course on groundwater monitoring and drilling supervision on the weekend of the 14th-16th September. This weekend aims to develop knowledge of groundwater, drilling supervision and groundwater monitoring, and is mainly intended for water engineers and managers. The cost for this three day course is £150 (including breakfast and lunch, accommodation not included).

By the end of the weekend, participants should have an understanding of:

• Groundwater movement and storage within different rock environments 
• How to carry out a groundwater monitoring programme
• The process of borehole siting and choosing an appropriate drilling technology
• How to supervise drilling contractors
• Pumping test supervision and how to collect all the relevant information needed to analyse the test
• How to access free professional advice when working with groundwater related projects

 Full details and booking information can be found on the REDR website...

Friday Photo (42) - Pump Repair

TANZANIA - PUMP REPAIR
Geologists developing their engineering skills - the (attempted) repair of a shallow well pump in the Kagera Region of Tanzania
(c) Geology for Global Development, 2012

Friday Photo (41) - Borehole in Ethiopia

ETHIOPIA: DEEP BOREHOLE
Clean groundwater is being extracted from a deep borehole in Ethiopia - giving local communities a better chance of staying healthy.

Groundwater Sustainability

Professor Paul Younger, Director of the Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability, recently gave a lecture at the Geological Society of London (available here) in which he spoke on the sustainability of groundwater in a changing world. All of us, whether residents of the UK, Europe, or the rest of the world will be and have already been affected by the impacts of a changing world on our water supplies. Factors such as urbanisation, agriculture and forestry changes have resulted in many changes, at many scales.

However, as with many challenges, it is the world's poorest that will be affected most by changes in groundwater by both natural and anthropogenic causes. Professor Younger highlighted the case of small-scale farmers in India who were dependent on their small-scale, shallow handpumped wells for water. As a result of corporations drilling and machine-pumping water out of large, deep boreholes for irrigation purposes (and the Indian government stating that they will receive free electricity as it is for the noble purpose of irrigation!) the small-scale farmers have found that their wells simply don't penetrate the water table anymore.

Small Handpump (Tanzania)

This contrasts sharply with the definition of sustainability set out by Professor Younger - "Enough, for all, forever." This large-scale groundwater abstraction for irrigation has resulted in 'not enough, for the poorest, for the foreseeable future.' In the case highlighted above it is clear that either (i) geologists working on the project did not consider the effect on the small-scale handpumps; or (ii) geologists understood the impact it would have on them and ignored it or were told to ignore it by those contracting them. This combination of poor government policy, corporation greed and either an inadequate or irresponsible hydrogeological survey is desperately sad. 

Irrigation in many cases is necessary and can help subsistence farmers to survive and increase their income, and yet there are far more water-efficient and sustainable ways to irrigate crops. National Geographic, this week, highlighted the expansion of drip irrigation around the world. This method aims to direct water to each crop, thus reducing waste. 

It is essential that the geoscience community, whether working for a large multinational consultancy or undertaking a small-scale community project, takes the time to properly address the multiple users of water supplies within a given area - and considers the impact of any rapid or gradual anthropogenic changes to groundwater on these multiple stakeholders. 

Friday Photo (39) - Clean Water in Kenya

KENYA: CLEAN WATER
Professor Paul Younger, Director of the Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability, said in his Shell Lecture at the Geological Society of London that the provision of clean water is the "single best thing to reduce infant mortality."  Hudson Wereh Shiraku captures the excitement that a clean water supply brings in this fantastic picture.
Photo (c) Hudson Wereh Shiraku, 2012
(Runner-Up GfGD Blog Competition 2012)

GfGD Blog Competition (Overall Winner) - Water of Life Project: Safe Drinking Water in Burkina Faso

As mentioned in Monday's post, Christopher Barry is the overall winner of the GfGD Blog Competition 2012. 

Christopher considers Canterbury to be home although his family has lived overseas throughout his life. He is currently approaching the end of his third year of studies in Earth Sciences at Cambridge and takes particular interest in geophysics and the deep Earth.

Although not decided on long-term plans, he intends to continue his studies next year to complete a MSci, which will include a project modelling chemical processes at the core-mantle boundary. When not studying, Christopher enjoys playing music, running, bird-watching and is a member of the Christian Union and the Zero Carbon Society at his university.

Christopher was privileged to be able to visit Burkina Faso recently, a very rural country where a great number of people are dependent on drilled wells with hand pumps for clean water. In Ouagadougou he met Mark Collier, where they talked at length about hydrogeology in the country. Here Christopher presents the brilliant work of Mark and his colleagues:

Burkina Faso, located in sub-Saharan West Africa has a population of 16 million, of which 80% live in rural communities.  28% of its rural population live further than a kilometre from a source of clean water [1]. These people are often forced to use near-surface water which can be a long walk away and contaminated by human and animal excrement. The annual rainfall is plenty to provide for the population’s usage, but for much of the country safe drinking water can only be found in bedrock requiring drilling equipment.

Fig. 1: A wet well.  

Mark Collier is third from right.

(Source: FIA Website)

Mark Collier, who has worked for Friends in Action (FIA) in Burkina Faso since 2005, takes several volunteer teams each year along with a drilling rig to these isolated villages. They work in the dry season to ensure a year-round water supply. In the far west, deep groundwater can be found reliably in the sandstone with little exploration work.  However, for most of the country, groundwater is in fault zones in granite. During the wet months, Mark uses resistivity surveys to locate water-bearing faults, which show up as a negative anomalies in resistivity [2]. Connected fault systems are important because isolated faults are often not sustainable water sources.

The teams use a mobile rig (Figs. 1,3) to drill down as much as 100m if necessary. Using casings and local materials, they protect the upper parts of the well from contamination whilst allowing deep ground water in (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: General cross section of a well drilled into granite in Burkina Faso

Technical expertise in the construction is vital, but FIA also recognises the importance of the relational side of development work. There are several steps that Mark and his team take to address these issues.

Before drilling a well, they carefully consider its location, collaborating with the locals. The drilling site is marked out for some time before work begins. This ensures, for example, that the proposed well is not in sacred ground where it would be unused and possibly offensive. Careful planning is necessary to make sure the well is as easily accessible as previous, unclean water sources.

It is essential for the locals to understand that the well is their property and responsibility after the construction. They are encouraged to help with the manual labour, including the making of the well cover (Fig. 2), a visible sign of their contribution. Mark encourages the locals to take ownership through the formation of a well management committee in the village to ensure good maintenance and sustainability.

During the work, the team camps in the village and share the locals’ food. A Burkinabé – from Burkina Faso – pastor accompanies the team who helps with communication, as mostly tribal languages are spoken in rural areas, and explains the compassionate motives for drilling the well. Through building personal relationship, the locals trust that the well is a good and necessary gift. The volunteers receive gifts from many villages, often local produce such as chickens.

FIA started drilling wells in Burkina Faso in 2005, and have drilled almost 200 holes. Their success rate has increased with better surveying. This last year they had twenty-five wet wells from thirty holes (83%) compared to the national average of 60%. Since 2005, only one of their wells has stopped functioning. In the village of Zitonosso, an existing well (not drilled by FIA) had silted up.  FIA offered to replace it if the village could cover the cost of the hand-pump, about $1500. Overnight, the village provided the funds, and the well was replaced in March (Fig. 3); a testimony to the sense of value and ownership of these wells among the Burkinabé people.

Fig. 3: Drilling in Zitonosso (photo courtesy of Mark Collier)

---

[1] http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/burkina-faso/

[2] Resistivity Methods, United States Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov/epahome/index2.html


Christopher Barry was the overall winner of the GfGD Blog Competition 2012, winning a 1:50,000,000 Geological Map of the World with explanatory notes, and a 1:40,000,000 Map of Global Groundwater Resources .

Reminder: Write To Your MP

Clean water and access to good sanitation benefit many other areas of development. "When we get it right [water and sanitation], so much else follows" says Alan Duncan, UK Minister for International Development. Join our campaign to write to as many local MPs as possible to tell them that we believe it is right and good news that the Government is doubling the number of people it intends to reach with clean water and access to good sanitation. 

Find out more about what to do here...

Guest Blog: Groundwater Use and Challenges in South Asia

Donald John MacAllister is a PhD student at Imperial College London, undertaking research into saltwater intrusion - an important environmental and anthropogenic hazard for many communities around the world. He has a background in both geophysics and water management, with a focus on water supply and sanitation in the developing world. Today he shares about some of his experiences in South East Asia, and the challenges of supplying clean water...

Arsenic, Fluoride and Iron are major chemical contaminants that arise naturally in the groundwater systems of the Gangetic plains and affect huge populations in India and Bangladesh. 

Groundwater has been extensively exploited in large areas of South Asia in the last twenty years or so, in response to the vulnerability of surface water to contamination by chemical and microbiological contaminants.  The health problems related to surface water development are well documented. Surface water is more easily contaminated by microorganisms than groundwater. This occurs because the pathways for contamination are more direct and much quicker through surface runoff processes. Groundwater is particularly low in biological contamination because it is protected by the rock and sediments overlying the main aquifer. A lack of adequate sanitation compounds the problem. Infant mortality is a key indicator of the rate of water related disease and in South Asia this was (and often still is) extremely high. As a result a huge programme of groundwater development was pursued by UNICEF and the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) in Bangladesh in the 1970’s. It was assumed that groundwater provided a safe and relatively inexpensive source of drinking water. To this day little resource assessment is conducted before a well is sunk.

However in the early 1990’s doctors in West Bengal, India, began to identify the first cases of arsenic induced skin lesions. Eventually the source of these lesions was identified. The source was shallow groundwater contaminated by naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Only recently has the full extent of the problem been realised. Bangladesh and India face a huge public health challenge in addressing this issue. It is estimated that between 35 and 77 million people suffer from arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh alone.

I recently spent a year in the Gangetic plains working with people directly affected by arsenic and fluoride contamination. I was part of a multidisciplinary team working on health sector reforms in Bihar, India. My responsibilities covered six districts in south west Bihar and focused on key WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) challenges.

One of the first tasks I had was to visit various water treatment plants that had been installed by contractors to the local PHED a year earlier. The plant consisted of a solar pumping unit (, with an adsorbent unit acting to remove the arsenic from the water supply. The water was then piped to a public tap stand. The plant had been designed and constructed by a contractor with a year’s operation and maintenance included in the contract. The village was in a fairly remote area of Bihar and the operation and maintenance of the plant had not been considered beyond the first year’s contract. A local man from the community had been trained at the start of the project in basic maintenance but that training did not extend to more technical aspects of the maintenance of the plant. As a result when the filter needed replacement the plant ceased to function. With the filter soiled and the tap stands damaged the community returned to their traditional, contaminated, handpump sources.

In another example, the local government had installed multiple handpump attachment units to pre-existing handpumps. Again the PHED does not have the manpower or the expertise to maintain these. The complexity of the technology is beyond the scope of the mistris (maintenance man) skills (basic mechanical repairs). However the issue here was different, the pump with the treatment unit attached produced a significantly smaller discharge than the equivalent pump without the attached treatment unit. As a result the pump users disconnected the treatment unit and returned to using the untreated water. The day when I was there, a child was collecting water from one such pump (top picture). It was clear that for this child the work was significantly reduced by disconnecting the filter. The community were aware of the water quality problem, but as there was no immediate health effects they had reverted back to using the contaminated supply to minimise collection times.

These experiences made me acutely aware of some of the key challenges in the WASH sector, challenges such as the selection and use of appropriate technology. How do we ensure the sustainability of the technologies and avoid the problem I witnessed with the handpump attachment units? One way is to involve the user at all stages of the process, from selection to installation to operation and maintenance, accepting however that some level of outside support is likely to remain necessary. 

The contamination of groundwater by heavy metals in South Asia is a huge public health and environmental challenge. It is important to consider whether groundwater is the correct source in these communities with the knowledge we now have? If it is, there is a need for a thorough understanding of the processes leading to arsenic and fluoride contamination and the best way to develop groundwater in regions were these contaminants are a problem. This requires well trained hydrogeologists willing to cooperate with local communities and institutions to help them address this huge challenge.

For a good background reading on Arsenic in groundwater and strategies to reduce its impact see this link from UNICEF. 

Friday Photo (34) - Small Earth Dam in Ethiopia

ETHIOPIA: SMALL EARTH DAM
Small earth dam used to collect and store rainwater, and transport water via a pipe to support around 5000  people.

Friday Photo (33) - Shared Water Supply in Ethiopia

ETHIOPIA: SHARED WATER SUPPLY
A water supply in Ethiopia shared by animals and humans, increasing the potential of diarrhoeal disease transmission. For many communities they have no choice but to drink this water.

Write to Your MP: UK to Double Support for Water and Sanitation

Last week we posted on our Facebook wall the fantastic news that the UK Government has decided to double its support to water and sanitation projects in the world's poorest countries. The UK Department for International Development (DFID) will work to secure access to clean drinking water and proper sanitation for more than 60million people over the lifetime of this parliament.

As we have posted numerous times, access to clean water and good sanitation has a knock-on benefit to many other areas of life. It means children will no longer have to walk many miles to collect water, thus increasing the time they can spend at school. It means health problems, many avoidable diseases, can be reduced. This is turn can improve the life expectancy of mothers giving birth and young children especially. Improved health, through drinking clean water, can mean less days are lost to sickness and so people have the freedom to work and generate income. In fact, for every £1 spent on water and sanitation in the developing world, it is estimated by the United Nations that a staggering £8 is returned in reduced health costs, saved time and better productivity.

Alan Duncan, Minister of State at DFID, recently stated in a debate to mark World Water Day:

"Ensuring access to water and sanitation for the poorest is, to pick a metaphor, the bread and butter of development. When we get it right, so much else follows: children become more likely to reach their fifth birthday, and they are healthier and in a better position to benefit from education; women, who carry most of the world’s water, are empowered; and economic growth and prosperity are enhanced and facilitated. While we fail to deliver those most basic necessities, not only are there an estimated 2.4 million preventable deaths each year, but generations of people become trapped in poverty."

Any increase in the support the UK gives to water projects is fantastic news and deserves to be celebrated. We are asking those readers of the GfGD Blog who are UK Citizens to take this opportunity to write a brief letter to their constituency MP to express your support for this decision. It is important to let our MPs know when there is something we are happy with, as well as something we are not happy with. There is much debate about the UK aid budget at the moment, and it will be great for many MPs to hear that we think giving more support to water projects is the right thing! 

Some of you may be regular letter-writers to your MP, others may have never done it before. Here's our simple step-by-step guide:

(1) Work out who your MP is by putting your postcode into this website

(2) Write a letter addressed to your MP, stating why you are writing, why this is important to you and what you'd like your MP to do. 

(3) The letter can be very brief - the more concise the better. You can use some of the information in this blog post or other posts, or do further research if you'd like. Make sure you are polite.

(4) Post the letter to your MP (!)

At a cost of 50-60p for a stamp and about 10 minutes of your time - there's no real reason not to get involved in this GfGD activity! Once you've sent your letter - why not comment on this blog, stating who you are, what you do (e.g. PhD Student at King's College London) and which MP you wrote to. It will be great to see how many different MPs we've managed to contact to tell them that clean water and good sanitation save the lives of many of the world's poorest communities!

Friday Photo (24) - Rural Water Supply in Tanzania

TANZANIA: UNPROTECTED WATER SOURCE
This photo, taken in the Kagera Region of Tanzania, highlights a case where communities had been given limited support to protect their water supply - resulting in a large pool of stagnant water, attracting flies and animals.
(c) Geology for Global Development 2012

In Focus - Water and Sanitation

Last week it was announced that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target relating to clean water had been reached, meaning that the United Nations has managed to halve the number of people without access to clean drinking water. This is a huge success – access to clean water has significant benefits to other areas of life. It improves community health, increases the amount of time children can spend in school (rather than collecting water), it allows women to spend more time generating income rather than walking kilometres each day and reduces the danger they put themselves in through doing so. Over the past twenty years around two billion people have gained access to clean water supplies – this equates to just-under 274,000 people a day, over the past twenty years.

This work wouldn’t have been possible without the tremendous contribution of a wide range of disciplines, technical skills, lobbying organisations, Governments and funders. Geologists have played their important role, in providing some of the technical knowledge and skills required for implementing water projects.

As has been noted on a number of other blogs and statements (Tearfund & WaterAid), while this is a time to celebrate it is not a time to slow down. There are a number of points worth looking at:

(1) Having worked with communities in water-poverty in East Africa it is important to note that the speed of poverty-reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa is significantly slower than other regions – with around 40% of those people still in water poverty living in Sub-Saharan Africa. There must now be a focus on this great continent, with DFID and other major donors pushing ahead to see universal access to clean water.

(2) The percentage of people lacking access to clean water can only be an estimate, and is likely to fluctuate. Wells and other water sources can break; shallow wells can dry out, and over abstraction of water can lead to salt-water intrusion and well contamination. The funding of water sources must go hand in hand with the funding of water management training, effective operation and maintenance training, and the development of local hydrogeologists to monitor and manage the abstraction of groundwater. It simply isn’t good enough to go and put water sources in communities without the investment in building technical capacity of the local communities, government engineers and geologists.

(3) The MDG relating to water also included a target for sanitation, which is one of the MDG targets most off-target. At current rates, Sub Saharan Africa will take another two centuries to meet their target on sanitation. This is a major problem, and must be addressed by world governments and international institutions. The provision of toilets, sanitation facilities, and sanitation training is fundamental to reducing the burden of preventable diseases. Good hygiene training is also essential.

We hope that this news does not make Governments get complacent about this fundamentally important issue, but causes them to see what can be achieved by an investment in this sector and take a further push to see an end to this tragedy in the very near future. Why not take time to write to your local MP as we approach World Water Day (22nd March) to urge them to take the further action required to bring universal access to water and sanitation. 

Friday Photo (21) - Shallow Well Maintenance

 

TANZANIA: REPAIRING A SHALLOW WELL
District water engineers work with the local community to repair a broken shallow well in Tanzania
(c) Geology for Global Development 2012



Friday Photo (15) - Teaching About Water

TANZANIA: TEACHING COMMUNITIES HOW TO MANAGE THEIR WATER SYSTEM 
(c) Geology for Global Development 2012

Friday Photo (14) - Fancy Drinking This?

TANZANIA: POOR QUALITY WATER SOURCE 
Fancy drinking this? How about washing in it, or cooking with it? For some communities in the Kagera Region of Tanzania, and many other places, they have very little choice. GfGD founder, Joel Gill, was involved in supervising the initial surveying for a clean water source in this locality.
(c) Geology for Global Development 2012

Friday Photo (11) - World Walks for Water March 2011

LONDON: WORLD WALKS FOR WATER, MARCH 2011
Former International Development Secretary and Current Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander, takes part in the Westminster Walks for Water event in London. MPs and Ministers from across the political divide came together to hear about the importance of clean water and safe sanitation. 
(c) Geology for Global Development 2011