Testing for Contamination
Michigan Environmental Education Curriculum
Groundwater Contamination
So if we want to find the contamination plume, we can just go and take a picture of the area, right? NO...remember everything is underground! You can do some preliminary visual work at a contamination site, such as checking to see if a nearby river is contaminated or what possible above-surface sources exists. In order to find the contaminant plume, however, you need to drill test wells or use other technology to find concentrations at different points underground.
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The Plume Source Game on the next page will demonstrate how testing the concentration of contaminants at different places can help you guess at a plume's shape and direction. In reality the process is much more complex
than this. There are no nicely drawn lines beneath the ground,
but just water and soil that need to be taken out and sent to a
laboratory for testing. The testing tells the scientist or engineer
what the concentration is at that well point. After gathering many
points the scientist can mathematically draw the plume. |
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