Mapping of contaminant plumes with geoelectrical methods. A case study in urban context

During the past two decades, the diagnosis and monitoring of polluted sites have become more important. Urban sites are particularly difficult to study, because they are contaminated with various pollutants, and there is a large physical and chemical heterogeneity. The heterogeneity comes from the landfilling of various solid wastes and remolded soil (endogenous or exogenous) from which they were constituted over time. Traditional techniques such as wells monitoring, are often insufficient to evaluate the extension of soil contamination. This is why we proposed a geoelectrical methodology from the fastest to the most information rich technique, showing all carry out and acquisition times: electromagnetic low frequency conductivity mapping, electrical resistivity profiles, chargeability profiles and spectral induced polarization (SIP) soundings. This strategy has been successfully applied to an urban site located in the Paris Basin (France). A conductivity map in relation with geochemical and lithological informations should provide us information to implement electrical resistivity and chargeability profiles. The latter allowed us to differentiate 3 main anomaly zones that have been determined. As interpretation of chargeability profiles is difficult, because it integrates polarization mechanisms with different relaxation times, we add spectral induced polarization soundings that provide us information concerning the contaminant nature. We determined the extension of an organic phase, and of 2 highly mineralized zones that could be linked to biodegraded and/or with pyrite areas. That theory is consistent with groundwater analysis and SIP data. The conclusion is that the suggested methodology is well suited to the study of urban contaminated sites including several different pollutants. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.