Ida Morén

I am a PhD candidate at the program of technical hydrology and hydraulics, in my last year of study.

I study the transport of solutes in surface water and focus mainly on the hyporheic zone, which is the sediments ambient to the stream, where surface water and ground water meet.

The objectives of my reach is to better understand the transport of water and solutes into and out of the hyporheic zone and the effect that this has on transport processes at the reach scale, and further, at the stream network scale. It is important to understand those processes in order to describe the local hydrological cycle of a catchment in detail, and the distribution of transport times therein. Furthermore, the understanding is essential in order to plan well-targeted stream restoration efforts, since the hyporheic zone is a hot spot for biogeochemical processes.

To reach my objectives, I work both with the development of mathematical transport models and with investigations in the field. The fieldwork includes tracer tests with Rhodamine WT and mapping of stream geomorphology in a large number of different reaches with different character, both in natural and anthropogenic altered streams. I also have experiences from planning a reactive tracer tests using nitrogen and phosphorous isotopes. The models I used are mainly developed in Matlab and are semi-analytical solutions on the transport of solutes, in 1D. However, I have also used HEC-RAS for simple numerical simulations of surface water flow in short reaches and stream networks.  

The first part of my PhD project concerns stream restoration and nutrient mitigation in the hyporheic zone. It was part of the research project Soils2Sea, within BONUS, the joint Baltic Sea research and development program (Art 185), and thus funded jointly from EU and from The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvådsverket). The second part of my PhD project concerns the effect of hyporheic flow on groundwater transport and its connection to stream and catchment characteristics. It is funded by the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM).

Dated: 2020-05-04