Time-Lapse 3D GPR Characterization and Monitoring of Near-Surface Groundwater and Contaminant Flows

78376-Near-surface groundwater and contaminant plumes threaten to contaminate the nation's potable groundwater supply. Such contaminant plumes need to be located, characterized, and monitored over time, in order to identify situations where remediation is required and to ensure the recovery of contaminants in such operations. This project will utilize Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) technology to characterize and monitor these contaminant plumes. In Phase I, time-lapse, three-dimensional GPR imaging of contaminant plumes will be performed, and quantitative estimates of the contaminant properties (e.g., saturation/concentration levels) will be made. A time-lapse synthetic GPR data set will be developed and used to test novel methods for imaging, inversion, and uncertainty analysis of contaminant plume property distributions. Time-lapse seismic data processing and inversion/saturation estimation, already successful in the monitoring of petroleum reservoirs during oil production, will be adapted to the processing and inversion of time-lapse, three-dimensional GPR data for groundwater contaminant applications. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: Three-dimensional, multi-offset ground penetrating radar data are currently expensive to acquire, and high-quality, time-lapse image processing, quantitative property estimation, and uncertainty analysis are not currently available for such data. The proposed technology should fill this market need by developing the necessary software tools and providing a cost-effective capability for the environmental engineering business community. The GPR process will aid remediation of the nation's groundwater supply, which is increasingly threatened by contamination of hazardous waste and petroleum products. The potential market for the technology is huge, with government and private organizations slated to spend as much as $250 billion to clean up as many as 350,000 contaminated sites over the next 30 years.