You are here:
TEMPORAL GEOPHYSICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF THE FT-2-PLUME AT THE WURTSMITH AIR FORCE BASE, OSCODA, MICHIGAN
Citation:
Joyce, R., C. Vukenkeng, E. Atekwana, E. Atekwana, D. D. WERKEMA, S. Rossbach, G. Abdel, C. Davis, AND J. Nolan. TEMPORAL GEOPHYSICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF THE FT-2-PLUME AT THE WURTSMITH AIR FORCE BASE, OSCODA, MICHIGAN. Presented at Symposium on the Applications of Geophysics to Environmental and Engineering Problems, Philadelphia, PA, April 06 - 10, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation
Description:
The decommissioned Wurtsmith Air Force Base former Fire Training Cell (FT-02) facility has been the focus of several geophysical investigations. After several decades of fire training exercises, significant amounts of hydrocarbons and some solvents seeped into the Subsurface contaminating the vadose and saturated zones in the source area. Groundwater geochemistry studies defined a contaminant plume that was approximately 125 m wide and > 300 m long. The boundary of the plume was further defined by using ground penetrating radar (GPR), self-potential (SP), and resistivity techniques. The source of the geophysical anomalies was attributed to biogeochemical Modifications of the contaminated zone resulting from intrinsic bioremediation. In 2007, another integrated geophysical study of the site was conducted. GPR, SP, and electrical resistivity surveys were conducted with expectations of achieving similar results as the past investigations. However, there was a marked decrease in geophysical response from all of our geophysical techniques. The GPR anomaly has migrated deeper into the subsurface, the positive SP response was significantly attenuated, and the conductive resistivity anomaly has been replaced by background resistivity values. Also, six Geoprobe cores at three different locations were collected in order to conduct laboratory microbial counts and IP measurements. We attribute the attenuation of the observed geophysical anomalies to ongoing soil vapor extraction initiated in 2001. Significant removal of the contaminant mass by the vapor extraction system altered the subsurface biogeochemical conditions and these changes were documented by the 2007 geophysical data. The results of this study show that the attenuation of the contaminant plume is detectable with geophysical methods.