Groundwater Flow and Contaminant Transport in Carbonate Aquifers

Carbonate aquifers are an important source of water throughout the world. They are complicated systems and not always easy to interpret. Caves and channels form in the rock, leading to complex flow pathways and unpredictable contaminant behaviour. This volume covers the range of techniques used to analyse groundwater flow and contaminant transport in carbonate aquifers. The book opens with a review of thoughts and methods, and continues by discussing the use of tracers, hydrograph and hydrochemograph evaluation, estimation of aquifer properties from outcrop studies, numerical simulation, analogue simulation, and 3-D visualization of conduits. Other papers address the critical evaluation of matrix, fracture and conduit components of flow and storage. An understanding of these approaches is important to engineers or hydrogeologists working in carbonate aquifers.