Multi-Disciplinary Approaches To Reactive Transport Simulation In Aquifer Systems.

Organiser: Steven F. Carle, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (carle1@llnl.gov)

Water managers have begun to realize the long-term links between water quality and quantity, surface water and groundwater interactions, and past and future human activities. There is increasing interest to improve application of reactive transport simulation to large-scale aquifer systems, which presents a multi-faceted theoretical and computation challenge.

The scientific problems are highly multi-disciplinary including conceptualization of hydraulic and biogeochemical heterogeneity; assessing the impact of the vadose zone; scaling of measurements, processes, theory, and computation; and improving efficiency and accuracy of theoretical and numerical algorithms.

Applications derive from a variety of reactive sources including non-point agricultural (e.g. pesticides, nitrate); point industrial (e.g. solvents, fuel, metals, and salts); use of treated sewage for recharge (e.g. viral, bacterial, and chemical residuals); radionuclide migration (e.g., waste disposal and underground nuclear tests); and natural (e.g. arsenic). This session emphasizes science and methods used to bridge multi-disciplinary challenges in creating realistic simulation of reactive transport processes at scales relevant to aquifer systems.