Identification of leachate from livestock mortality burial using electrical resistivity and small-loop EM survey: case history

Abstract

Leachate from livestock mortality burial is harmful to the soil and groundwater environment and adequate assessment approaches are necessary to manage burial sites. Among the methods used to detect leachate, geophysical surveys, including electrical resistivity and electromagnetic (EM) techniques, are used in many engineering approaches to environmental problems, such as identifying contaminant plumes and evaluating hydrogeological conditions. Electrical resistivity, with a small-loop EM survey, was used in this study as a reconnaissance technique to identify the burial shape and distribution of leachate from livestock mortality burial in five small separate zones. We conducted a multi-frequency small-loop EM survey using lattice nets and acquired apparent conductivity values along several parallel and perpendicular lines over a burial site. We also compared geophysical results to the geochemical analysis of samples from both a leachate collection well and a downstream observation well within the study area. Depth slices of apparent conductivities at each frequency (obtained from the small-loop EM survey data) clearly identified the subsurface structure of the burial shape and the extent of leachate transport. Low-resistivity zones, identified from two-dimensional (2D) electrical resistivity imaging results, were matched to the five burial zones (within a depth of 5 m), as well as high electrical conductivity of the leachate obtained from leachate collection wells, and depth slices of the apparent conductivity distribution obtained from the small-loop EM survey. A three-dimensional (3D) inversion of resistivity data provided a detailed 3D structure of the overall burial site and leachate pathways. Moreover, these zones were widely spread over the burial site, indicating that leachate potentially extended through damaged regions of the composite liner to a depth of 10 m along the downstream groundwater flow. Both the small-loop EM method and the electrical resistivity method were considered suitable for identifying the shape of the livestock mortality burial and the extent of leachate.