Margaret Shanafield

Brief Introduction

Name: Margaret Shanafield
Highest qualification and awarding university PhD, University of Nevada Reno
Designation Senior Lecturer, Senior Researcher
Employer Flinders university
Contact details:

  1. Email:
  2. WhatsApp number/Mobile number
Margaret.shanafield@flinders.edu.au
+61426292293
Home page link on your employer web site if available http://www.flinders.edu.au/people/margaret.shanafield
Key areas of interest Surface water-groundwater interactions, streambed dynamics, intermittent rivers, groundwater recharge international water development, water-energy-food nexus, citizen science
Web links for your research profile on Google scholar; ORCID or ResearchGate (if available); only one of them please. Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=nkh8aTUAAAAJ&hl=en

Margaret Shanafield is a senior lecturer with over 15 years of experience in water resources. She is passionate about understanding how water flows in natural systems, how we use water, and how we can get clean water to those who need it- in Australia and across the globe. She recently completed an Australian Research Council DECRA fellowship understanding catchment processes (streamflow generation, streambed infiltration and groundwater recharge, evapotranspiration) in intermittent stream systems. She routinely does both fieldwork and computer modelling, and enjoys developing novel field tools. She has over 40 peer-reviewed publications, and has recently begun working with NCGRT to organise groundwater training courses.

Research Project

  1. Predicting groundwater replenishment in arid catchments. Funding: Australian Research Council
  2. Integrated water, soil and nutrient management for sustainable farming systems in South Central Coastal Vietnam and Australia. Funding: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research
  3. Australia-Japanese comparative analysis of urban water-food energy security nexus. Funding: Mawson Lakes Fellowship Program

Key Publications/Reports

  1. Shanafield et al. (2020) Catchment-scale characterisation of potential infiltration through an intermittent streambed; a simple geophysics approach. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface. 125, e2019JF005330. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019jf005330 
  2. Gutierrez-Jurado KY et al (2019) What triggers streamflow for Intermittent Rivers and Ephemeral Streams? Water Resources Research 55(11):9926-9946.  https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR025041 
  3. Shanafield M, Cook PG (2014) Transmission losses, infiltration and groundwater recharge through ephemeral and intermittent streambeds: A review of applied methods. Journal of Hydrology, 511(518-529)
  4. Shanafield M, Banks EW, Arkwright JW, Hausner MB (2018) Fiber‐optic sensing for environmental applications: Where we have come from and what is possible. Water Resources Research 54(11):8552-8557. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR022768 
  5. Shanafield M, Rigosi A, Liu Y, Brookes J (2020) The impact of multiple anthropogenic stressors on a clear, freshwater wetland. Ecology and Society 25(2):6. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11437-250206