Jackie Pates

Dr. Jackie Pates is a Senior Lecturer at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, specializing in the use of radionuclide tracers (234Th, 210Po, 210Pb, 137Cs, 7Be, 222Rn) to study marine and freshwater processes. She has been at Lancaster since 1999 after completing her PhD at SUERC in East Kilbride and post-doctoral work at Edinburgh University.

Her research focuses on three main strands:

• Development of radioanalytical techniques for artificial and natural radionuclides in environmental matrices
• Geochemical cycling of radionuclides
• The use of radionuclides as tracers of environmental processes

Dr. Pates has conducted significant research in the Mediterranean through EU projects INTERPOL and ADIOS, studying sediment resuspension, atmospheric deposition, and nutrient cycling. Her freshwater work includes groundwater-surface water interactions using 222Rn (with Prof. Andrew Binley) and sediment studies in lakes using 210Pb and 137Cs. Current projects involve DGT development for contaminated groundwater assessment and 7Be analysis for soil erosion studies.

Her publication record shows consistent contributions to environmental radiochemistry, with recent work focusing on novel sampling methods like the 2024 DGT passive sampler for Cs-137 measurement in marine environments.

Dr. Pates currently holds funding for the Small Scale Experiments for Tritium Breeding (SSETB) project (2025-2026) and the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council–Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund studentship (ongoing since 2012).

She maintains active collaborations with researchers including Prof. Hao Zhang on DGT development for nuclear site assessments and continues to advance methodological capabilities in environmental radiochemistry.