Detection of Illegal Dump Deposit with GPR: Case Study

Abstract

An illegal dumping site located in Ping-Tung County, Taiwan was selected as the case study site. For the site remediation and decision-making purposes, illegal waste dumps need to be identified before the application of remedial tasks. However, traditional investigation via soil gas/soil sampling is not able to detect buried wastes or containers in a cost-effective and time-efficient way. In this study, a ground-pentrating radar ͑GPR͒ system was utilized to locate the buried wastes under a central frequency operation of 300 MHz. This paper was aimed at ascertaining the feasibility of GPR application on this case study. Based on the results of GPR detection, several highly suspected regions of buried waste were delineated through congregating the sections of abrupt intensive GPR reflectance on each walkpath. Subsequently, the suspected regions were subjected to field sampling as well as laboratory analysis of volatile organic compounds, semivolatile organic compounds, and heavy metals. With the aid of GPR detection, several bags of fly-ash-like dust were unearthed in hot spot region. According to lab data of sample analysis, soil samples from hot spot area were abundant in zinc and lead, which were closely associated with the unearthed fly-ash-like dust. The results of an integrated approach of site investigation in an uncontrolled dumpsite were presented to offer suitable information for those who intend to utilize the GPR application on the masterpiece of hazardous waste management.

Geophysical and Geochemical Characterization of Solidwaste Dumpsite: A Case Study of Chowa Gujar, Peshawar (Part of Indus Basin)

“…[14] indicated that dumpsite produce discontinuous intense scattering regions on radargram. According to [43] strong diffraction hyperbola is produced because of the high reflectivity of buried waste and the high heterogeneity of buried waste disturb the soil media. The strong signals at different depths underneath those areas covered by domestic and commercial wastes are attributed to the targets (rubbles and metallic wastes) within a waste deposit.…”

Ground Penetrating Radar as a Functional Tool to Outline the Presence of Buried Waste: A Case Study in South Italy

“…Among the electromagnetic methods, ground-penetrating radar (GPR), famous in the archaeological field [11], has been lately reported as achieving resounding success due to its versatility and to the possibility of numerous applications like the characterization of aquifer morphology [12,13], mapping artificial structures (e.g., pipes, tanks, cables) [14], water content determination [15], monitoring hydrological processes [16], contaminant mapping [17], detecting of buried heterogeneities such as illegal dump deposit [18], or cavities [19].…”

“…GPR advantages are survey speed, coverage of large survey sites [20][21][22][23], data processing and resolution [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], high implementation with other geophysical techniques [27], and short time of acquisition [28,29].…”

“…Indeed, in previous years, other authors [8,18,31,32] have exploited GPR practicality in outlining contamination areas due to solid waste pollution giving back results in terms of reflection anomalies correlated to the presence of contaminant spreading.…”

Detection and Geometrical Characterization of a Buried Landfill Site by Integrating Land Use Historical Analysis, Digital Photogrammetry and Airborne Lidar Data

“…Detection and geometric characterization of unknown landfill sites, in terms of areal extent, thickness, and volume of filling, represent the first steps towards a full analysis of the related geological and environmental hazards. Geophysical methods are typically used to characterize landfills in different settings [15][16][17][18][19][20]. By coupling geophysical prospection with standard (costly) engineering geological investigations (e.g., boreholes, cone penetration testing), it is possible to estimate, with some approximation, the actual shape of the bottom surface resulting after the excavation within natural rocks or soils, the degree of anthropogenic transformation, and the volume of waste deposits [21].…”