The impact of urban groundwater upon surface water - eTheses ...

INTRODUCTION
The quantification of contaminant fluxes from contaminated land to surface waters via the
groundwater pathway is poorly understood and documented. Previous work has generally
been on a local scale and has either addressed groundwater geochemical flux for limited
determinands to simple rural catchments (Gburek et al.,1999), or has focussed upon the
discharge of specific contaminant plumes to the surface water (Lorah et al.,1998).
Contamination of urban groundwater and surface waters has also been examined on a regional
scale (Ator et al., 1998, Lindsey et al.1998). However, little has been done to link local and
regional investigations, or to quantify the groundwater contaminant flux to a river from an
entire conurbation for a large suite of determinands. This provides a further rationale for the
current research.
1.2 Aim and objectives
The overarching aim of this research is to investigate the impact of contaminated land and
groundwater on urban surface-water quality.
Four main objectives have been identified to meet this aim:
1) to characterise and quantify the contribution of groundwater-derived contaminants to the
surface water quality of an urban river at the subcatchment scale;
2) to investigate the physical and chemical processes controlling contaminant flux across the
groundwater/surface water interface;
3) to investigate the processes controlling the temporal and spatial variations in groundwater
flow and contaminant flux to the river; and
2