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PERFORMANCE AND ANALYSIS OF AQUIFER TESTS WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTAMINANT TRANSPORT MODELING
Citation:
Molz, F., O. Gueven, J. Melville, AND J. Keely. PERFORMANCE AND ANALYSIS OF AQUIFER TESTS WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTAMINANT TRANSPORT MODELING. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/2-86/062.
Description:
The scale-dependence of dispersivity values used in contaminant transport models to estimate the spreading of contaminant plumes by hydrodynamic dispersion processes was investigated and found to be an artifact of conventional modeling approaches (especially, vertically averaged parameters in two-dimensional plume simulations). The work reported here shows that variations in hydraulic conductivity with depth result in significant variations in ground-water flow and contaminant transport velocities; it is the resulting velocity variations that, if vertically averaged, give rise to apparant scale-dependency of dispersion. Special depth-selective observation well designs are recommended by the authors for use in tracer tests, so that detailed estimates of the variations in hydraulic conductivity and flow and transport velocities can be obtained.