The future of radiotracing

Abstract

Radiotracing has enormous potential to provide data to underpin environmental management in aquatic ecosystems. The use of tracer data to validate numerical models, improvements in data acquisition and new tracer forms provide the basis for the future of radiotracing. However, an increasing regulatory burden, reduction in tracer availability and a loss of technical expertise threaten this field of study. Standardisation of tracer approaches where possible and new work on assessing the impact of radiotracers on non-human biota are two areas that may enable the future use of radiotracers at a field scale in engineering and research applications. © The authors.