MULTI-REGION REACTIVE TRANSPORT DUE TO STRONG ANISOTROPY IN UNSATURATED SOILS WITH EVOLVING SCALES OF HETEROGENEITY
At Hanford, the prediction of field-scale flow and transport in the vadose zone beneath tank farms and other waste-management facilities provide as good example of the limitations of current conceptualizations. Contaminant plumes in Hanford's vadose zone typically show extensive lateral spreading with splitting along flow paths and multiple zones of high-contaminant concentrations, even in sediments that appear homogeneous and isotropic at the regional scale. Because of the limited success in predicting current contaminant distributions using existing conceptual models and approaches to parameterization, there is some uncertainty about predictions of future transport behavior. This is mostly because current parameter upscaling procedures result in overly smoothed descriptions of the hydraulic functions that cause many of the important details (e.g. extreme water and solute flux, anisotropy), known to be caused by finescale heterogeneity, to be ignored.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA; Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE - Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG07-02ER63512
- OSTI ID:
- 893181
- Report Number(s):
- EMSP-86952-2005
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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