Richard Cheal, our John Day award winner 2014 was awarded funding for his project, “An evaluation of basic geophysical and borehole logging approaches for improving borehole placement and wellbore construction: A case study examining a saline-contaminated fluvial aquifer in southern Malawi.”

In his project area  in South Eastern Malawi, only  27.5%  of  its  population  has  adequate  water coverage  (defined  as  the  provision  of  1  borehole  for  every  250  people).    Coupled with this, shallow groundwater boreholes are increasingly becoming unusable, mainly due to the levels of salinity of unproven origin.   During his project, he utilized basic equipment (available in country) to undertake a geophysical survey over a 1500m x 1500m area.  The geophysical data was combined with that obtained from a newly developed simple borehole logging technique.  He was able to provide recommendations on the optimal placement and construction of boreholes in the local area.  Below are a couple of slides giving a flavour of his fieldwork.

(all slides courtesy Richard Cheal)