Design and construction of instrumented buried field columns to assess the environmental fate and transport of munition residues in the vadose zone in cold regions

ABSTRACT: Environmental problems resulting from military activities have been identified worldwide, increasing the importance of environmental fate and transport studies munitions residues. For this purpose, an infrastructure composed of twelve instrumented buried field columns was constructed to assess the mobility of propellant and explosives in unsaturated soils. Such a setup has the advantage of monitoring the complex snow-ground-infiltration interactions observed during the spring and assessing their impacts on contaminant transport. It was instrumented to assess the materials’ thermo-hydrogeological behaviour, the total dissolved mass of contaminants as well as their fate and transport in unsaturated soils. This study will provide insights into the water and mass flows of munition residues in cold regions soils. The proposed infrastructure will allow studies to be carried out on other emerging contaminants in different climatic and hydrogeological settings.