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The course provides insight on DNAPL behavior, distribution and fate in fractured geologic media, including fractured sedimentary and crystalline rocks, karst and clayey strata. Chlorinated solvent DNAPLs are emphasized, but attention is also directed at creosote, coal tar, PCB oils and pesticides. A course goal is to bridge the gap between research and practice and presents innovative tools for improved characterization and the utility of building robust site conceptual models to aid decision-making at real sites. This course elucidates field-based conceptual models for subsurface contaminant behavior at sites with low-permeability strata (aquitards) or fractured bedrock. These types of sites require different methods and approaches than those for granular unconsolidated deposits where conventional methods are intended.
The first four offerings of this course (1997,1999, 2000 and 2003) were well attended and received excellent reviews. The 2006 offerings incorporate the most recent advances in:
- monitoring technologies for improved site characterization and remediation performance assessment, such as Rock Core Analysis, and
- natural attenuation analysis and evidence for in situ degradation processes,
- prospects/approaches for remediation with insights from case studies.
This course is based on recent information from intensive studies of industrial sites as well as from laboratory and field experiments and mathematical models.
DNAPLs typically represent the worst case scenario for groundwater contamination. Clayey aquitards that provide a high degree of protection to underlying aquifers from dissolved-phase contamination may offer only minimal protection from DNAPL contamination because DNAPLs have a propensity to enter and flow downward in very small fractures.
The information presented in this course is relevant to all contaminated sites on fractured rock and fractured unlithified aquitards because DNAPLs are excellent tracers of the contaminant migration pathways in fractured systems. This is critical to understanding the behavior of all types of contaminants in fractured media, including inorganic solutes, microbes and viruses.
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