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Mapping Sediment Contamination with a Gamma-Ray Spectrometer, Underwater and on Land
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, 25th European Meeting of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics, Sep 2019, Volume 2019, p.1 - 5
Abstract
Environmental contamination due to human activity is recognized as one of the modern dangers of our industrial advancements. The current approach to the management and monitoring of contaminated aquatic and non-aquatic sediments involves invasive, often labor-intensive methods. The method is time-consuming and costly and the resulting contours of the contaminant distribution are subject to a number of potential errors, with the potential for ‘hot spots’ to remain unmapped. At present, there are no means for the passive, in-situ mapping of contaminants in aquatic and non-aquatic sediments.
Our method addresses the main problems associated with the current approach. We propose a method that provide rapid, spatially detailed data on contaminant distributions and concentrations in sediments by using a gamma-ray spectrometer. A gamma-ray spectrometer can be used for mapping aquatic sediments (by using a vessel as platform) and non-aquatic sediments as floodplains by using a quad-bike or drone as platform for mapping.
The study shows how these gamma-ray spectrometers have been used to map the contamination of a river basin of the Elbe tributary in Germany. The combination of all platforms result in information on contaminant levels of a river system in aquatic and non-aquatic sediments.