Fate and transport of volatile compounds in the unsaturated zone (Contact: Peter Kjeldsen)
Spills of gasoline and other volatile organic pollutants in the unsaturated zone are subject to complicated transport processes including source volatilisation, diffusion, advection, transfer to water phase, sorption, leaching, degradation, and emission to the atmosphere. These processes are studied in field experiments and with models.
Groundwater surface water interaction: Fate of organic pollutants (Contact: Philip Binning)
The interaction between groundwater and surface water is an area of increasing interest. The EU-Water Framework directive has highlighted that all groundwater and surface water should be viewed as integrated water bodies. Current work is considering contaminant fluxes and the fate of chlorinated solvents and pesticides in the transition zone between groundwater and small rivers.
Contaminant leaching from clays (Contact: Poul L. Bjerg)
Many contaminated sites are located on clay soils. These contaminants pose a long term threat to groundwater because of their low permeability, which means that they can leach contamination to underlying groundwater systems over very long periods. Describing and modeling the processes governing this leaching behavior is very challenging because of the interactions between fractures, sand stringers and the clay matrix. Detailed understanding of contaminant behavior in clay geologies is needed to design effective remediation techniques to remove the contaminant problems. This topic considers the development of new monitoring and modeling tools and seeks to quantify the time horizons of contaminant leaching under both natural and remediated conditions.
Fate and transport of herbicides in aquifers (Contact: Poul L. Bjerg and Hans-Jørgen Albrechtsen)
Transport, sorption and degradation of pesticides in groundwater has been investigated by laboratory, field injection experiments under natural flow conditions and field observation studies. Controlling parameters for sorption and degradation are investigated.
Uptake, metabolism and toxicity of organic pollutants in plants (Contact: Stefan Trapp) Plants can take up water and gases from their environment and in some instances also chemicals. Uptake can be followed by accumulation, metabolism, loss and/or toxic effects. These processes are determined simultaneously by a combination of laboratory experiments and models.
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