1887

Abstract

The non-saturated zone plays a crucial role protecting shallow aquifers against pollutants. Nevertheless, the high-resolution characterisation of the hydraulic properties of soils and sediments that cover the aquifer is difficult to be achieved, since direct investigations making use of samples obtained from boreholes and trenches are faced with both methodological and financial constraints. High-resolution geophysical methods like electrical resistivity tomography can be of great help in detailed groundwater vulnerability studies considering the well-known relationship between the electrical resistivity and hydraulic permeability of non-consolidated sediments. The geophysical parameter used in this paper is the longitudinal electrical conductance defined as the ratio between the thickness and resistivity of each geoelectrical layer. This parameter has a similar form to the AVI formula frequently used for assessing groundwater vulnerability. In spite of the fact that geophysical derived vulnerability indexes are quantitative and continuous, without the subjectivity inherent of indexes derived from other classical vulnerability methods, five categories ranging from very low to extreme vulnerability have been generated. Given the electrical resistivity variability of the sediments in the studied area, the resulting vulnerability map is very easy to be understood for any non-expert people involved in land-use management.

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/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.20147091
2009-09-07
2024-03-29
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