WIM no. 17 Spring 2020

מכון ויצמן למדע of declining rainfall. Israel has few reservoirs, and is now desalinating seawater for human consumption and agricultural use. At the Weizmann Institute, Dr. Kiro has expanded her research to study the circulation of seawater and groundwater in aquifers beneath the coastline of Israel and the Mediterranean and is comparing that to other coasts around the world. One collaborative field project underway examines the coastal sediments and aquifers of the Delaware coast in the eastern United States, which present a very different profile than Israel’s. About half of the world population lives in coastal regions and relies, in part, on groundwater from coastal aquifers. The interface between land and sea, and the interaction between groundwater and seawater, present a complex and interconnected system. Understanding its dynamics is important for practical purposes such as water management, with many as-yet-unexplored questions for a geochemist. The geologic record can also reveal past climate changes and provide information for environmental and climate models that are essential for future predictions. Dr. Kiro spent much of the summer of 2019 along the Chilean coast in South America taking core samples from the ocean sediments with a team from Rutgers University. Analyzing these samples will give a detailed picture of the area’s paleoclimate over tens of thousands of years. She also worked with a team in Norway, looking for identifiable signatures to enable radium isotope fingerprinting of water unlocked by melting permafrost. Permafrost in circumpolar regions has recently undergone massive thawing, with severe environmental consequences, including the release of greenhouse gases and the possible amplification of global warming. The research team found an identifiable permafrost radioisotope fingerprint, and showed that it could be used to track the thawing of these long-trapped bodies of water. Dr. Kiro received a long string of awards and recognitions as a student and in her postdoctoral years, including a three-month internship with the U.S. Geological Survey funded by the United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) in 2009. She did her postdoctoral fellowship at the Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, and spent time there as an associate research scientist before joining the faculty of the Weizmann Institute in 2019. About half of the world population lives in coastal regions and relies, in part, on groundwater from coastal aquifers. The interface between land and sea, and the interaction between groundwater and seawater, present a complex and interconnected system. g Dr. Yael Kiro Weizmann MAGAZINE 20–21 S P R I N G 2 0 2 0