b'Environmental geophysics Environmental geophysicsleast 6.5 km from where the jars werewater management. Interestingly, like finally located (for Site 1 jars), and thatmany of us working with data, they feel the big jars weigh more than 27 tonnes?that there is still not enough data to fully And that there is something like 90 sitespopulate a useful three-dimensional with up to hundreds of jars per site. Thenumerical groundwater model.current thoughts are that they were carved in the Iron Age (roughly fromAnd my congratulations to all of the 1200 BC and 600 BC), but no one knowsBest Paper and Poster Award winners, who the carvers were, or what happenedespecially Neil Symington and his six co-to their civilisation. Unfortunately,authors from Geoscience Australia who Jamie was not able to attend thewon the award for the Best paperNear-conference session (work, work, work)surface and groundwater. They presented but is happyto answer any questionson the use of probabilistic modelling to Mike Hatchthat people haveplease contact himhelp infer groundwater salinity based Associate Editor for on jamie@gbgoz.com.au. Once we canon inverted AEM and sparse borehole Environmental geophysicstravel overseas I am definitely headingconductivity survey results. Their michael.hatch@adelaide.edu.au over to Laos to visit some of these sites.approach allows the inherent uncertainty Fascinating. in each data set to be used to improve understanding of salinity distribution AEGC 2021 highlights As expected, I enjoyed Gianlucain the top 10 m of the subsurface. With Fiandacas talk on the use of multiplemy limited knowledge of groundwater Welcome readers to this issuesinversion scales to improve resolutionmodelling, it looks to me as if the ability column on geophysics applied to theof Cole-Cole parameters in AEM datato quantify the salinity distribution, as environment. In this column I will reportaffected by IP, and not just because I thinkwell as associated uncertainty, would on some of the interesting talks that Ithat there is more IP (and SPM for thatbe just the kind of information that saw at the recent AEGC meeting: heldmatter) in our EM data than is realised/ groundwater modellers need. Many virtually, but based in Brisbane. I have notacknowledged and we need ways toof us are (still) fixated on the concept participated in many virtual conferenceshandle it. To me it was just as interestingof a single or best solution to the so they are somewhat novel for me.that Gianluca thinks that this will be ainversions that we use to interpret our Nevertheless, I have to say that I quitegood approach in many situations wheredata sets. This work makes it clear that we enjoyed this, and am pretty sure that theinformation lives in the data sets atneed to think about working in a more fully-virtual to hybrid conference modelmultiple scales and our attempts to makeprobabilistic thought space to ensure is likely to be here to stay. everything resolvable to the same scalethat we capture more of the information may not give us the best results. in our data sets.As predicted in my last column, I quite enjoyed a number of talks. It wasntTaylor and his horde of collaboratorsAnd it cant be one of my columns a huge programme, which given thefrom the CSIRO presented a(at least in the last year or two) if it circumstances was to be expected. Againcomprehensive study of combined AEMdoesnt mention the Loupe EM system. though, there was plenty of good content. and hydrological studies (including bothGreg Street (and co-authors, including On a not-so environmental and ageochemistry and limited groundwaterAndrew Duncan) presented a number more personal-interest level I quitedata modelling) at Goulburn Island inof interesting case studies, highlighting enjoyed Jamie Speers presentation onthe Gulf of Carpentaria, NT. This studythe potential of their new portable EM the use of GPR as part of a search fordetermined that there is likely to besystem.archaeological artefacts/sites on Theenough water in the system, and thatDont forget that you can go back and Plain of Jars in Laos. Did you realise thatrecharge is sufficient, to meet the localwatch any of the talks that you missed (or these megalithic jars are carved outAboriginal communitys needs, giventhat you missed details on) for at least the of solid rock, at quarry sites that are atimproved infrastructure, monitoring andnext few months. Now thats progress.39 PREVIEW OCTOBER 2021'