Predicting the extent of discontinuous permafrost and affiliated ground water aquifers

• Main Authors: S E Kopczynski, D E Lawson, S A Arcone, C F Snyder, W B Krätzig, Y S Petryna
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Fairbanks; permafrost; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.1085.5778; http://research.iarc.uaf.edu/NICOP/DVD/ICOP%202003%20Permafrost/Pdf/Chapter_105.pdf

ABSTRACT: Hydrocarbon spills at a former tank farm on Fort Wainwright, near Fairbanks Alaska, required a delineation of the contaminant pathways in aquifers within discontinuous permafrost. Ground water flow is complicated by large, irregularly shaped and impermeable bodies of frozen alluvial sediment that create aquifers that are of irregular dimension and hydraulically interconnected above and below the permafrost. Both natural and anthropogenic disturbances form isolated or interconnected unfrozen zones, further complicating the potential patterns of ground water flow and contaminant migration. Geophysical investigations coupled with borehole geologic information provide the basic data on the configuration and dimensions of the active layer, suprapermafrost and subpermafrost aquifers, and the perennially frozen materials. These data were synthesized in a three-dimensional model of the permafrost and aquifer distributions using the software "EarthVision". This model is the geologic framework for on-going site characterization and contaminant remediation.