Mozambique is located on the east coast of southern Africa and is considered one of the emerging economies of the region. It's also a country that's trying to repair the damage done by years of civil war, including one of the most basic of necessities - access to clean drinking water.
Dr Dioni Cendón is a senior environmental research scientist at ANSTO. He recently returned from a field trip to Mozambique where he was training researchers in the region and also helping them to investigate the source of groundwater salinity in Maputo – the country’s capital.
“Groundwater in many African countries is the only way they can access water, partly as a result of variations in climate and also because they don’t have the infrastructure to access surface water.
“In some cases, it's the only water they have access to, apart from surface water found in rivers, which is more susceptible to contamination,” said Dr Cendón.
Nuclear and isotope methods are useful in regions like Africa where more traditional hydrologic tools give ambiguous results or are too costly to be applied. |