Informatics Publishing Limited

Paras R. Pujari ¹, V. Jain ², V. Singh ³, K. Sreelash ⁴, S. Dhyani ¹, M. Nema ⁵, P. Verma ¹, R. Kumar ¹, S. Jain ⁵, M. Sekhar ⁶

Affiliations
1 CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur 440 020, IN
2 Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar 382 355, IN
3 Department of Geology, Delhi University, New Delhi 110 007, IN
4 National Centre for Earth Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram 695 011, IN
5 National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee 247 667, IN
6 Indian Institute of Sciences, Bengaluru 560012, IN

Abstract

In the era of Anthropocene, characterized by a dramatic increase in anthropogenic pressure, global changes are challenging the capacity of planet Earth to sustain the development of human societies in the long term. In the past two decades, this concern has fostered worldwide efforts to develop integrated studies of the ‘critical zone’ (CZ), the outer skin of the Earth, extending from the canopy top to the bottom of the aquifer, hosting the continental biosphere and providing basic human needs such as water, food, energy and ecosystem services¹ . Environmental processes within the CZ, such as energy and mass exchange, formation of soil, streamflow and evolution of landscape are critical to sustain biodiversity as well as humanity ^2,3 . However, with rapid socio-economic development, the CZ is subjected to increasing stress from anthropogenic forcings such as the growth in human and livestock populations, increase in land use, global environmental changes, and expanding consumption patterns⁴ . The expanding needs for sustainable development call for understanding, predicting and managing the complexity as well as dynamics within the CZ and to study its feedback with other compartments of the environmental systems^5,6 . The main challenge faced by the CZ research is to integrate effectively the multiple disciplines at stake, from geosciences, biological sciences, ecology, hydrology, soil science to social sciences, working within a wide range of temporal and spatial scales^7,8 . The interdisciplinary and multiscale study of terrestrial ecosystem processes can be best addressed by critical zone observatories (CZOs), where domain experts across different disciplines study various aspects of the CZ. This will lead to holistic understanding of complex systems 8 .

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Pandurang Balwant ¹, Kavita Bramhanwade ², Veligeti Jyothi ², Paras R. Pujari ¹, Shalini Dhyani ¹, Parikshit Verma ², Alberto Godio ³, Fulvia Chiampo ⁴

Affiliations
1 National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nehru Marg, Nagpur 440 020, India; Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research, Ghaziabad 201 002, IN
2 National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nehru Marg, Nagpur 440 020, IN
3 Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering – DIATI, Politecnico di Torino, C.so Ducadegli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torinio, IT
4 Department of Applied Science and Technology – DISAT, Politecnico di Torino, C.so Ducadegli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, IT

Abstract

The interpretation of the resistivity method depends on acquired resistivity contrast between the contaminated object and the host matrix. The present attempt reports preliminary understanding of the sensitivity of resistivity method to monitor herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) contamination in order to produce a reference dataset to develop a geophysical method to monitor soil bioremediation of herbicidecontaminated soil. Laboratory level experiments were carried out to define the correlation between herbicide concentration (H_c) and resistivity in non-polarizable (milli q double distilled water of 5.9 μs/cm EC) and sandy soil matrix. The results confirm that the resistivity method can be used for the purpose of monitoring herbicide by adopting formation factor as 2.5 for the sandy soil matrix. The results indicate that moisture content of soil affects the resistivity parameter and it should be considered in the interpretation of data.

Keywords

Agriculture geophysics, contamination, electrical resistivity method, herbicide.

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