TITLE:
The Assessment of Groundwater Vulnerability Due to Leaching of Chemicals: The Review of Attenuation Factor
AUTHORS:
Sivarajah Mylevaganam, Chittaranjan Ray
KEYWORDS:
Attenuation Factor, Index Based Models, Groundwater Vulnerability Assessment, Uncertainty Level, Volatization, MATLAB
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Soil Science,
Vol.6 No.1,
January
26,
2016
ABSTRACT: To assess
the groundwater vulnerability due to leaching of chemicals, the groundwater
system in the unsaturated zone is characterized by conceptual models that are
further extended and refined with more detailed mathematical models to
understand the governing physical processes in detail. However, due to lack of
data and uncertainty level, an intermediate transition through index based
models is researched. The attenuation factor (AF) approach, which works under
the assumption that the chemicals degrade following a first-order kinetics and
determines the fraction of the chemicals that goes to groundwater table, is one
of the index based models that has been widely used due to its simplicity.
Therefore, the objective of this paper is to review the research works done
using the AF approach, to outline the future research needs. Furthermore, the
mathematical implementation of the AF approach and the associated uncertainty
levels is explained through an example and MATLAB source code.