Hydrogeophysics
The vadose zone is an extremely important zone that recharges our subsurface water resources and also serves as the repository for municipal, industrial and government waste. It acts as a buffer and filter for contaminants introduced by agricultural activities, and also serves as a reservoir for many agricultural crops. As safe and effective use of the vadose zone environment is a major challenge facing our society, there is a great need to improve our understanding of processes, their dynamics and their spatial and temporal patterns. With an increasing demand for investigation methods that have both high accuracy and high resolution across a variety of spatial scales, a new discipline ''hydrogeophysics'' has evolved, which aims at combining knowledge from various disciplines such as hydrogeology, soil physics, biogeochemistry, and geophysics to improve subsurface hydrogeological characterization and monitoring. Geophysical methods offer the advantage of being able to measure subsurface structures and to estimate flow and transport properties in a minimally or non-invasive manner. The discipline of hydrogeophysics is expanding rapidly, and studies are being performed using a wide range of standard geophysical methods as well as new methods that have been developed specifically for hydrologic applications. Time-lapse imaging has illustrated the potential of hydrogeophysical methods for elucidating dynamic subsurface processes. The purpose of this special issue of Vadose Zone Journal is to present recent research advances within the emerging discipline of hydrogeophysics, focusing on applications in the vadose zone. The special issue contains selected contributions of two scientific sessions, one held during the EGU-AGU joint meeting in Nice, 2003 and one held during the AGU-fall meeting, 2004. The studies presented in this special issue discuss a wide range of applications, including: hydrogeological parameter estimation, dynamic imaging of plume movement, water quality assessment, and identification of hydrogeological structures. A few papers focus on enhancing data or estimation quality through improved instrumentation, acquisition geometries, inversion approaches, or pre-inversion data processing. The hydrogeophysical studies presented in this special issue utilize a variety of geophysical techniques, including self potential, ground penetrating radar (GPR), induced polarization (IP), resistivity, electromagnetic induction, and micro-wave radiometry. More classical ''invasive'' measurement techniques like time domain reflectometry (TDR) are also presented in three contributions to demonstrate the link between this established method and other hydrogeophysical techniques.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00098
- OSTI ID:
- 842045
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL-56362; R&D Project: G42101; TRN: US200515%%978
- Journal Information:
- Vadose Zone, Vol. 3, Issue 4; Other Information: Submitted to Vadose Zone: Volume 3, No.4; Journal Publication Date: 11/2004; PBD: 17 Sep 2004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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