Natural Attenuation

A unifying theme of Toxics Program investigations is the characterization of the natural response of hydrologic systems to contamination. This makes the sites where the investigations are conducted ideally suited to assessing potential long-term impacts, evaluating the potential and the limitations of remediation by natural attenuation, and designing systems to monitor the performance of remediation where natural attenuation is being relied upon.

Toxics Program Projects on Natural Attenuation

Headlines

• History and Ecology of Chloroethene Biodegradation–A Review
• The Changing Face of Microbial Communities in Contaminant Plumes
• Software Provides Estimates of How Long it Will Take for Remediation Efforts to Achieve Their Goals
• A Unique Approach to Evaluating Natural Attenuation is Applied Worldwide
• Landmark Book Published on the Fate of Contaminants in the Environment: Partition and Adsorption of Organic Contaminants in Environmental Systems
• MTBE Can Degrade Naturally Without Oxygen
• Does Landfill Methane Degrade Naturally Before Contaminating Ground Water?
• How do you Clean Up Gasoline Spills Naturally?
• Relying on Nature to Clean Up Contaminated Ground Water
• MTBE Biodegrades Naturally in Stream Sediments
• The Atmosphere - A Potential Source of MTBE to Ground Water
• Nature's Way of Cleaning Up Mining-Contaminated Streams
• Can a Sewage-Contaminated Aquifer Naturally Clean Itself?

Natural Attenuation Remediation Related Activities

• Listing of Toxics Program Activities
• Listing of Other USGS Activities
• Training Courses on Estimating Times of Remediation Associated with Monitored Natural Attenuation and Contaminant Source Removal, U.S. Geological Survey and Virginia Tech

Fact Sheets

• Contaminant Sorption by Soil and Bed Sediment Is There a Difference? (Chiou and Kile, 2000)
• Modeling Solute- Transport and Biodegradation with BIOMOC (Essaid and Bekins, 1998)
• Bioremediation--Nature's Way to a Cleaner Environment (Chapelle, 1995)
• Simulating contaminant attenuation, double-porosity exchange, and water age in aquifers using MOC3D (Goode, 1999) Bibliographies
• Natural Attenuation and Biodegradation