Using Advective Transport Phenomena to Account for Uncertainty of Conductivity in Monitoring Design

Area of Science:

• Environmental Engineering
• Hydrogeology
• Groundwater Contaminant Transport

Background:

• Current methods for monitoring groundwater plume growth are data-intensive and computationally expensive.
• Assessing the optimal number of observation wells requires understanding contaminant spread dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a simplified analytical method for predicting contaminant plume growth.
• To investigate the impact of aquifer heterogeneity on plume spread and monitoring network design.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing advective transport phenomena with simple analytic expressions.
• Employing three stochastic parameters: log conductivity variance and characteristic lengths.
• Analyzing water particle spreading in vertical sections to assess uncertainty.

Main Results:

• Plume growth is calculated using only three stochastic parameters describing aquifer heterogeneity.
• In heterogeneous aquifers, plume growth is less sensitive to conductivity uncertainty.
• In homogeneous aquifers, significant uncertainty in plume position and length arises, necessitating denser monitoring.

Conclusions:

• The simplified method effectively predicts contaminant plume growth and its sensitivity to aquifer properties.
• Aquifer heterogeneity significantly influences the uncertainty in plume spread, impacting monitoring network design.
• A calculation tool is provided to aid in practical application and decision-making for groundwater monitoring.