Land and Water Quality

Overview

The purpose of the course is to develop an introduction to the theoretical and practical strategies used for assessing and managing the quality of soils and water. This module will introduce risk assessment and management using a tiered approach, including a discussion of the source-pathway-receptor model. This approach will subsequently be applied to assessing and managing water and land contamination.

Students will be introduced to the fundamentals of contaminant transport processes in the shallow subsurface, regulatory drivers and compounds of concern/sources in a water environment and hydrogeological site characterisation including sampling, monitoring and testing.

The land quality aspect of the course will consider the regulatory drivers for assessing and managing contaminated land and provide an overview of the UK approach for assessing and managing land contamination. Students will learn how to identify potential contaminants of concern and connect them with potential receptors via viable pathways within a conceptual model of the site. They will study how these linkages are developed and refined through the stages of risk assessment (preliminary, generic and detailed) and remediation options appraisal and implementation. This will include an introduction to how quantitative data is collected from the site (representative sampling strategies and laboratory analysis), an overview of remediation technologies and how they can be compared and assessed, and an introduction to verification and validation of land remediation.

Learning Objectives

On completion of the course you should:
• Have knowledge and understanding of the legislative framework for protecting and improving the quality of water, and land
• Have knowledge and understanding of site walk over surveys and sampling/monitoring strategies for soil, groundwater, surface water
• Have understanding of the application and derivation of Generic Assessment Criteria and other tools for assessing quality of soils, groundwater
• Have begun to understand and apply key concepts of contaminant fate and transport in groundwater
• Have begun to understand and apply/identify key concepts of groundwater management
• Understand how to implement remediation strategies and plans for contaminated soils and groundwater.
• Have an understanding of how to verify the remediation of soils and groundwater
On completion of the course you should be able to:
• research sources of contamination and the properties of contaminants
• transfer and apply basic principles underlying contaminant transport in groundwater to real life examples
• assess key aspects of groundwater quality and hydrogeological environments
• apply the Source, Pathway, Receptor model and pollutant linkages for contaminated land to synthesize preliminary risk assessments in the form of desk studies
• define, apply and formulate conceptual models
• create decision records arising from preliminary risk assessments
• apply decisions from preliminary risk assessments to designing both non intrusive and intrusive methods of site investigations as well as to assessing health and safety considerations
• apply, formulate, create and interrogate Detailed Quantitative Risk Assessments

Skills

On completion of the course you should be able to:
• practically apply knowledge of groundwater chemistry
• evaluate the chemical quality of groundwater
• have a broad recognition of the key concepts related to groundwater flow and management
• apply key concepts and analysis techniques to real life case study examples and formulate the results of hydrogeological investigations and assessments in the form of technical reports
• create and evaluate qualitative and quantitative conceptual models for contaminated land
• perform preliminary risk assessments to a standard required by a regulator
• apply conceptual models to develop sampling strategies for contaminated land
• design and cost site investigations based on preliminary risk assessments
• evaluate remediation options and make decisions on remediation strategies
The course will enhance the following skills:
• the ability to solve non-routine problems
• the ability to learn independently
• the ability to solve some general problems through systematic analysis
• problem based and project-orientated group work
• technical report writing
• evaluate scientific and trade literature critically

Assessment

None