ORGANIZERS:

Boaz Lazar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yishai Weinstein, Bar-Ilan University

 

This conference is the third in a series of conferences devoted to the research of radon and radium isotopes as powerful environmental tracers. Scientists from all over the world will come to present advances in field, experimental and theoretical aspects, to exchange methodologies and to establish new collaborations.

Being enriched in certain environments (such as groundwater and saline lakes), radon and radium isotopes are being used to trace exchange and contamination processes in aquatic and marine settings as well as in the atmosphere. All isotopes involved are naturally occurring and radioactive, with the wide variability of the half-lives involved (minutes to >1,000 years) permitting the tracing of processes on various time scales. The conference will include talks on methodologies of radon and radium and isotope measurements and especially about their applications to environmental research. Some of the applications include: (1) submarine groundwater discharge and its possible impact on coastal water quality, (2) tracing and modelling the circulation of seawater and lake water through aquifers, (3) reactions of the circulating waters with aquifer solids (the subterranean estuary”), (4) the reaction of the above to sea and lake level changes, (5) radon in soil and air, (6) air exchange between caves and the outside atmosphere (the “breathing” of caves), and (7) the use of radon for earthquake predictions.

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Bill Burnett, Florida State University
Kirk Cochran, Stony Brook University
Doug Hammond, University of Southern California
S. Krishnaswami, Physical Research Laboratory, India
Matt Charette, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Willard Moore, University of South Carolina