Abstract

The use of wastewater for irrigation in sandy soil increases the pollution risk of the soil and may infiltrate to the water table of groundwater aquifer. This is happening in an area southwest of Erbil City on both sides of the main wastewater valley outlet. Characterizing and monitoring underground conditions and the location of subsurface contaminants is a challenging and costly endeavor. Many sensors and non-invasive geophysical measurement techniques have been developed to interpret the nature of the subsurface without disturbing it. In this study the Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) was used to get detailed 2D resistivity models of the shallowest parts of the subsurface on both side of the valley along eight profiles. The wenner array was employed with 1m, 3m and 5m electrode spacing. The length of each profile was 60 m. To create a model for the subsurface resistivity Res2Dinv software was used. The results showed that the shallowest parts of the ground consist of two types of materials: the first is a clayey sandy gravel soil represents the recent alluvial deposits with resistivity value of 15-167 &Omega.m and thickness 1-2 m. Many pollutant zones were detected within it; the second is saturated silty clay and other clayey materials with resistivity value of 9-52 Ω.m. Again some polluted zones were detected. Moreover some fractured areas were detected at where the risk of downward infiltration is expected. The resistivity value changes randomly in both horizontal and vertical direction because of the high infiltration which transports the contaminated materials downward and sideward along in homogeneities formed by human activity in the studied area.

Keywords:

Electrical resistivity tomography, environmental study, Iraqi, Kurdistan, Southwestern Erbil city, wenner array, wastewater valley,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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The authors have no competing interests.