Naval Arctic Research Laboratory (NARL) Subsurface Containment Berm Investigation

• Main Author: Bjella, Kevin
• Other Authors: COLD REGIONS RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING LAB FORT WAINWRIGHT AK
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: Solid Wastes Pollution and Control; *OIL POLLUTION CONTAINMENT; ARMY RESEARCH; GROUND PENETRATING RADAR; PERMAFROST; SPILLING; SUBSURFACE; THERMAL ANALYSIS; TRENCHES; BERM; Arctic; Active layer thickness; Barrow; permafrost; Alaska
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA623818; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA623818

The former Navy Arctic Research Laboratory Airstrip Site in Barrow, Alaska, has a history of fuel spills. Various methods have been used to re-mediate the site, including installing a subsurface containment berm and associated recovery trenches. The containment berm was designed to cre-ate a raised permafrost feature that effectively prevents free product mi-grating from the upstream side to the downstream side. This study focused on using non-intrusive ground-penetrating-radar (GPR) techniques coupled with ground probing and desktop thermal analyses to assess if these methods could help to determine whether the containment berm is functioning as designed (i.e., effectively decreasing active-layer thickness and raising the permafrost table). The results demonstrate that these GPR methods were useful for this study and that the berm is effectively raising the permafrost table along the survey transects explored. The original document contains color images.