GROUNDWATER CONTAMINATION PLUME DELINEATION USING LOCAL SINGULARITY MAPPING TECHNIQUE

Abstract

The evaluation and remediation of contaminated aquifers require accurate delineation of
contamination plumes. Ideally a large number of observed concentration data are required to achieve an accurate
delineation of the contamination plume. However, in practice due to the budgetary constraints, the contamination
in groundwater resources is detected by limited number of arbitrary located or predesigned contamination
monitoring wells. Therefore, a technique is required to estimate the boundaries of the plume using the available
sparse observation data. In this work, Local Singularity Mapping Technique is used for plume delineation. The
singularity mapping technique is based on the multifractal concept. In fractal geometry a local feature is similar to
the whole in terms of shape and structure. Generalized self-similarity is characterized by a power-law relationship.
Using this method, singularity indices are estimated for the entire study area using sampled concentration data.
According to these indices the mapped area (study area) is classified into subsets including contaminated and clean
areas. The boundaries between these two subset areas can be identified as the contamination plume edge. The
performance of this method is evaluated in an illustrative contaminated study area to demonstrate the potential
applicability of the proposed methodology. The singularity indices can be utilized to locate potential contamination
sources as well as plume boundaries. These evaluation results demonstrated that the contamination plumes can be
relatively accurately delineated using the fractal geometry.