Browse > Article
http://dx.doi.org/10.9720/kseg.2018.4.727

Assessment of Groundwater Contamination Vulnerability by Geological Characteristics of Unsaturated Zone  

Jeong, Gyo-Cheol (Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Andong National University)
Publication Information
The Journal of Engineering Geology / v.28, no.4, 2018 , pp. 727-740 More about this Journal
Abstract
The media in the undersaturated zone is defined as the uppermost layer of the water table at which the groundwater is unsaturated or saturated discontinuously. The properties of the unsaturated zone can affect the reduction of contaminants that flow from the lower part of soil to the water table. In recent, there have been problems in evaluating groundwater contaminations vulnerability because weighted value for permeability is given, regardless of anisotropy and heterogeneity in the unsaturated media. Geological media have various ranges of permeability. When applying the weighted value, representative of permeability for grain sizes standardized, to construction of contamination vulnerability, it will produce more exaggerated result than the case that considers unsaturated geological properties. In this study, we performed laboratory column tests considering two sets of the unsaturated layers in order to investigate the permeability in anisotropic unsaturated zone with anisotropy. On the basis of the tests, average permeability coefficients were calculated considering the properties of unsaturated media obtained from drill cores in the field. The final contamination vulnerability map constructed shows that the contamination vulnerability map applying the properties of geological media of the unsaturated zone coincides much better with the results measured in the field, compared to the case of contamination vulnerability considering the weighted value in the unsaturated zone.
Keywords
unsaturated zone; groundwater; contamination vulnerability; anisotropy; heterogeneity;
Citations & Related Records
연도 인용수 순위
  • Reference
1 Aller L., Truman B., Jay H.L., Rebecca J.P., and Glen H., 1987, DRASTIC: A Standardized system for evaluating ground water pollution potential using Hydrogeologic setting, USEPA-600/2-87-035
2 Barry M.E., and Wayne L.M., 1990, A GIS-based approach to evaluating regional groundwater pollution potential with DRASTIC, Journal of soil and water Conservation, 45(2), p. 242-245
3 Kang J.E. and Park, E.G., 2010, A Comparative Application of DRASTIC and SINTACS Models for The Assessment of Groundwater Vulnerability of Buyeo Area, Koean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment, 15(5), 32-39
4 Kim S.H., 2004, A Study on the improvement of a DRASTIC model for Groundwater vulnerability evaluation, MSc Thesis, Seoul National University of Technology
5 Lee J.H., Cha, K.H., Nam, K.H, Song, J.Y., Jeong, G.C., 2015, Estimation method on groundwater contamination vulnerability considering surface-subsurface geological characteristics, The Journal of Engineering Geology, 102-103
6 Merchant J.W, 1994, GIS-based groundwater pollution hazard assessment : A critical review of the DRASTIC model, photogrammetric engineering & remote sensing, 60(9), 1117-1127
7 Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Korea Rural Community Corporation, 2000, Regional assessment and mapping of groundwater vulnerability to contamination for aquifers in Korea
8 Ministry of Environment. 2011, Development of quantitative source control technique and ecosystem interaction model for groundwater contamination
9 Simunek J, Genuchten M.T.V., and Sejna M., 2005, The HYDRUS-1D software package for simulating the one-dimensional movement of water, heat, and multiple solutes in variably-saturated media, University of California Riverside, California, 270p.