Integrated Environmental Modeling: Pollutant Transport, Fate, and Risk in the Environment

Integrated Environmental Modeling: Pollutant Transport, Fate, and Risk in the Environment Review

A unified presentation of environmental model development, implementation, and testing

Integrated Environmental Modeling teaches model development, model implementation, and model testing skills in a unified manner, crosscutting the three "media" comprising environmental systems—air, water, and soil—by focusing on parallels and similarities between them, and introducing a new generation of multimedia models. No other single volume offers comprehensive coverage of chemical transport and fate in all three environmental media, including the resulting impacts on the biosphere and human health, with a focus on the fundamental processes underlying environmental modeling.

Integrated Environmental Modeling provides broad-based training in the development of pollutant transport and fate models in air, water, and soil, with a focus on five essential competencies:

• Understanding the fundamental process principles that govern contaminant transport and transformations in multimedia environments, emphasizing the parallels and links between different media
• Learning model development skills, starting from the simplest conceptual models and building more complex and realistic models that couple component process modules at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales of resolution
• Using statistical methods and data sources to estimate input parameters and characterize model sensitivity and uncertainty
• Gaining hands-on experience with computer-aided implementation and evaluation of fate and transport models using realistic case study examples
• Applying fate and transport models to evaluate pollutant interactions with the biosphere, particularly in human exposure modeling and health risk assessment

Complete with case studies, Integrated Environmental Modeling is a valuable, single-source tool for senior and graduate students in environmental science and engineering courses on pollutant transport, remediation, and risk assessment, and an essential reference text for professionals in industry, consulting, and government agencies responsible for environmental assessment and risk analysis.

Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling

Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling Review

The challenges facing groundwater scientists and engineers today demand expertise in a wide variety of disciplines–geology, hydraulics, geochemistry, geophysics, and biology. As the number of the subdisciplines has increased and as each has become more complex and quantitative, the problem of integrating their concepts and contributions into a coherent overall interpretation has become progressively more difficult. To an increasing degree transport simulation has emerged as an answer to this problem, and the transport model has become a vehicle for integrating the vast amount of field data from a variety of sources and for understanding the relationship of various physical, chemical, and biological processes.

Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling is the first resource designed to provide coverage of the discipline’s basic principles, including the theories behind solute transport in groundwater, common numerical techniques for solving transport equations, and step-by-step guidance on the development and use of field-scale modeling.  The Second Edition incorporates recent advances in contaminant transport theory and simulation techniques, adding the following to the original text:

-An expanded discussion of the role of aquifer heterogeneity in controlling solute transport
-A new section on the dual-domain mass transfer approach as an alternative to the classical advection-dispersion model
-Additional chemical processes and reactions in the discussion of reactive transport
-A discussion of the TVD (total-variation-diminishing) approach to transport solution
-An entirely new Part III containing two chapters on simulation of flow and transport under variable water density and under variable saturation, respectively, and a third chapter on the use of the simulation-optimization approach in remediation system design

Applied Contaminant Transport Modeling, Second Edition remains the premier reference for practicing hydrogeologists, environmental scientists, engineers, and graduate students in the field. In 1998, in recognition of their work on the first edition, the authors were honored with the John Hem Excellence in Science and Engineering Award of the National Ground Water Association

Modeling transport and deposition of contaminants to ecosystems of concern: a case study for the Laurentian Great Lakes [An article from: Environmental Pollution]

Modeling transport and deposition of contaminants to ecosystems of concern: a case study for the Laurentian Great Lakes [An article from: Environmental Pollution] Review

This digital document is a journal article from Environmental Pollution, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Transfer efficiency (TE) is introduced as a model output that can be used to characterize the relative ability of chemicals to be transported in the environment and deposited to specific target ecosystems. We illustrate this concept by applying the Berkeley-Trent North American contaminant fate model (BETR North America) to identify organic chemicals with properties that result in efficient atmospheric transport and deposition to the Laurentian Great Lakes. By systematically applying the model to hypothetical organic chemicals that span a wide range of environmental partitioning properties, we identify combinations of properties that favor efficient transport and deposition to the Lakes. Five classes of chemicals are identified based on dominant transport and deposition pathways, and specific examples of chemicals in each class are identified and discussed. The role of vegetation in scavenging chemicals from the atmosphere is assessed, and found to have a negligible influence on transfer efficiency to the Great Lakes. Results indicate chemicals with octanol-water (K"o"w) and air-water (K"a"w) partition coefficients in the range of 10^5-10^7 and 10^-^4-10^-^1 combine efficient transport and deposition to the Great Lakes with potential for biaccumulation in the aquatic food web once they are deposited. A method of estimating the time scale for atmospheric transport and deposition process is suggested, and the effects of degrading reactions in the atmosphere and meteorological conditions on transport efficiency of different classes of chemicals are discussed. In total, this approach provides a method of identifying chemicals that are subject to long-range transport and deposition to specific target ecosystems as a result of their partitioning and persistence characteristics. Supported by an appropriate contaminant fate model, the approach can be applied to any target ecosystem of concern.