Groundwater flow and contamination studies

Groundwater moves through the subsurface along pathways shaped by the geometry of rock fractures, sediment layers, and the irregular mixing zones where aquifers meet rivers and streams — all of which govern how quickly contaminants spread and how difficult they are to remove. Predicting that movement is complicated by geological heterogeneity, meaning that small variations in rock or soil properties can produce transport behavior that classical diffusion models fail to capture, a phenomenon researchers call non-Fickian transport. To better characterize these systems without exhaustive drilling, scientists are developing techniques like hydraulic tomography, which infers subsurface structure from pressure responses at multiple wells, and distributed temperature sensing, which uses fiber-optic cables to detect groundwater discharge into streams. Active research questions center on how to represent reactive processes — such as contaminant sorption and microbial degradation — within heterogeneous and fractured media, and how to combine sparse field measurements with inverse modeling to reduce uncertainty in predictions at the scales that matter for remediation and water-supply management.

Works

92,939

Total citations

1,386,892

Keywords

Groundwater FlowTransport ModelingFractured Geological MediaHydraulic TomographySurface Water InteractionsNon-Fickian Transport