PLUME FINDING ANALYSIS AND RESULTS: EFFECT OF VARIOGRAM AND MONITORING WELL NETWORK INFORMATION ON PLUME DELINEATION AND UNCERTAINTY

The quantified location of a groundwater plume in three dimensions provides the cornerstone of information for environmental compliance and remedial action design. Plume delineation is facilitated through the combination of physics (groundwater flow and transport) models with data models using Kalman Filtering. This proven approach has been in existence for a decade and has been applied at several Superfund sites in the US. This work specifically analyses the uncertainty in the variogram method for developing statistical fields, and it's effect on plume delineation using this fused approach. Results of reduction in plume fringe uncertainty using a suite of variograms types and parameters for a hypothetical – but realistic – example are presented. Thus, the sensitivity of the variogram chosen for a site analysis is presented.