Hydrogeological-Geophysical Methods for Subsurface Site Characterization - Final Report

Abstract

The goal of this research project is to increase water savings and show better ecological control of natural vegetation by developing hydrogeological-geophysical methods for characterizing the permeability and content of water in soil. The ground penetrating radar (GPR) tool was developed and used as the surface geophysical method for monitoring water content. Initial results using the tool suggest that surface GPR is a viable technique for obtaining precision volumetric water content profile estimates, and that laboratory-derived petrophysical relationships could be applied to field-scale GPR data. A field-scale bacterial transport study was conducted within an uncontaminated sandy Pleistocene aquifer to evaluate the importance of heterogeneity in controlling the transport of bacteria. Geochemical, hydrological, geological, and geophysical data were collected to characterize the site prior to and after chemical and bacterial injection experiments. Study results shows that, even within the fairly uniform shallow marine deposits of the narrow channel focus area, heterogeneity existed that influenced the chemical tracer transport over lateral distances of a few meters and vertical distances of less than a half meter. The interpretation of data suggest that the incorporation of geophysical data with limited hydrological data may provide valuable information about the stratigraphy, log conductivity values, and the spatial correlation structure of log conductivity, which have traditionally been obtainable only by performing extensive and intrusive hydrological sampling.