Imaging high stage river-water intrusion into a contaminated aquifer along a major river corridor using 2-D time-lapse surface electrical resistivity tomography

Abstract

The Hanford 300 Area is located adjacent to the Columbia River in south-central Washington State, USA, and was a former site for nuclear fuel processing operations. Waste disposal practices resulted in persistent unsaturated zone and groundwater contamination, the primary contaminant of concern being uranium. Uranium behavior at the site is intimately linked with river stage driven groundwater-river water exchange such that understanding the nature of river water intrusion into the 300 Area is critical for predicting uranium desorption and transport. In this paper, we use 2-D surface-based time-lapse electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) to image the inland intrusion of river water during high stage conditions. We inverted approximately 1200 data sets (400 per line over three lines) using high performance computing resources to produce a time-lapse sequence of changes in bulk conductivity caused by river water intrusion during the 2011 spring runoff cycle over approximately 125 days. To invert the data, we use an image differencing approach that does not require regularization in the time dimension, enabling the inversion to accommodate the sharp, time varying contrasts in conductivity imposed by the moving water table. The resulting time series for each mesh element was then analyzed using common time series analysis to reveal the timing and location of river water intrusion beneath each line. The results reveal nonuniform flows characterized by preferred flow zones where river water enters and exits quickly with stage increase and decrease, and low permeability zones with broader bulk conductivity "break through" curves and longer river water residence times. ©2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.