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University of South Florida

Environmental Sciences

Sinkhole Conference 2015

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Evaluation Of First Order Error Induced By Conservative-Tracer Temperature Approximation For Mixing In Karstic Flow, Philippe Machetel, David A. Yuen Oct 2015

Evaluation Of First Order Error Induced By Conservative-Tracer Temperature Approximation For Mixing In Karstic Flow, Philippe Machetel, David A. Yuen

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Fluid dynamics in karst systems is complex due to the heterogeneity of hydraulic networks that combine the Porous Fractured Matrix (PFM) and the interconnected drains (CS). These complex dynamic systems often need to be treated as “black boxes” in which only input and output properties are known. In this work, we propose to assess the first-order error induced by considering the temperature as a conservative tracer for flows mixing in karst (fluvio-karst). The fluvio-karstic system is treated as an open thermodynamic system (OTS), which exchanges water and heat with its surrounding. We propose to use a cylindrical PFM drained by …


Accounting For Anomalous Hydraulic Responses During Constant-Rate Pumping Tests In The Prairie Du Chien-Jordan Aquifer System – Towards A More Accurate Assessment Of Leakage, Justin Blum Oct 2015

Accounting For Anomalous Hydraulic Responses During Constant-Rate Pumping Tests In The Prairie Du Chien-Jordan Aquifer System – Towards A More Accurate Assessment Of Leakage, Justin Blum

Sinkhole Conference 2015

The Prairie du Chien-Jordan Aquifer system is an important source of drinking water for residents of southeastern Minnesota. Assessment of the hydraulic properties of this aquifer continues to be of interest for wellhead protection and resource evaluation efforts. When performing constant-rate pumping tests on wells constructed in the karsted Prairie du Chien Aquifer, anomalous hydraulic responses resulting from cavernous flow are frequently observed. Hydraulic response in the adjacent Jordan Sandstone Aquifer is also commonly distorted because of bedding-plane fractures and well development techniques such as blasting and bailing. Resolution of these anomalous responses is important for accurate estimates of leakage …


Cars And Karst: Investigating The National Corvette Museum Sinkhole, Jason S. Polk, Leslie North, Ric Federico, Brian Ham, Dan Nedvidek, Kegan Mcclanahan, Pat Kambesis, Mike Marasa Oct 2015

Cars And Karst: Investigating The National Corvette Museum Sinkhole, Jason S. Polk, Leslie North, Ric Federico, Brian Ham, Dan Nedvidek, Kegan Mcclanahan, Pat Kambesis, Mike Marasa

Sinkhole Conference 2015

On February 12th, 2014, a sinkhole occurred at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The collapse happened inside part of the building known as the Skydome and eight Corvettes on display were lost into the void that opened in the concrete floor. In this region of Kentucky, known as the Pennyroyal sinkhole plain, subsidence and cover collapse sinkholes are commonly found throughout the landscape. This iconic karst region in the United States is also home to Mammoth Cave, the longest cave in the world, and thousands of other caves and karst features. Investigation of the sinkhole collapse began …


Building Codes To Minimize Cover Collapses In Sinkhole-Prone Areas, George Veni, Connie Campbell Brashear, Andrew Glasbrenner Oct 2015

Building Codes To Minimize Cover Collapses In Sinkhole-Prone Areas, George Veni, Connie Campbell Brashear, Andrew Glasbrenner

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Cover- collapse sinkholes are forming with increasing frequency under buildings. Analyses of sinkhole distribution in Beacon Woods, Florida, preliminarily indicate their occurrence is an order of magnitude greater in urban versus undeveloped areas, suggesting the structures themselves are enhancing the collapse process. The most likely causes are induced recharge via at least one of two sources. First, runoff and drainage from roads, structures, and impoundments that is not adequately dispersed will promote sinkhole development. Second, leaking water, sewer, and septic systems beneath or adjacent to a structure will also promote collapse. The process of cover-collapse from induced recharge is well …


Dye Tracing Through The Vadose Zone Above Wind Cave, Custer County, South Dakota, James Nepstad Oct 2015

Dye Tracing Through The Vadose Zone Above Wind Cave, Custer County, South Dakota, James Nepstad

Sinkhole Conference 2015

During the 1990s, in an attempt to better understand threats posed by surface developments overlying the cave, National Park Service staff at Wind Cave National Park in Custer County, South Dakota carried out a series of dye traces through portions of the vadose zone overlying the cave. Wind Cave is located within the 100m-thick Madison formation (limestone and dolomite), which in most locations is capped by varying thicknesses of the basal units of the Minnelusa formation (intermingled beds of sandstone, limestone, and shale). A variety of cave locations with dripping or pooled water were monitored for up to five years …


Finding Springs In The File Cabinet, Mason Johnson, Ashley Ignatius Oct 2015

Finding Springs In The File Cabinet, Mason Johnson, Ashley Ignatius

Sinkhole Conference 2015

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), in partnership with other agencies, is currently undertaking comprehensive sub-basin assessments statewide over a ten-year period. Southeast Minnesota has over 17,500 kilometers of perennial and intermittent streams, making the task of comprehensive sub-basin assessment challenging; the task is further complicated by karst geology. In the summer of 2014, a pilot project began between the MPCA and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to digitally preserve paper documents which capture qualitative and quantitative data about the hydrology, water chemistry, geomorphology, biology, land use and karst features of southeast Minnesota streams. The paper documents in file …


Legacy Data In The Minnesota Spring Inventory, Greg Brick Oct 2015

Legacy Data In The Minnesota Spring Inventory, Greg Brick

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Past spring inventories have covered certain parts of Minnesota reasonably well, notably, the springs of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area and the southeastern Minnesota karst. But hitherto, there has not been a systematic effort to create a uniform statewide inventory. The first step, before hunting down new springs, was to compile existing data and the most fruitful source of hydrological legacy data for the Minnesota spring inventory was the DNR Fisheries files. Once entered into a GIS-capable database, these spring locations can help “seed the ground” so that when crews finally do take to the field to map more springs, …


Sinkhole Vulnerability Mapping: Results From A Pilot Study In North Central Florida, Clint Kromhout, Alan E. Baker Oct 2015

Sinkhole Vulnerability Mapping: Results From A Pilot Study In North Central Florida, Clint Kromhout, Alan E. Baker

Sinkhole Conference 2015

At the end of June in 2012, Tropical Storm Debby dropped a record amount of rainfall across Florida which triggered hundreds, if not thousands, of sinkholes to form which resulted in tremendous damage to property. The Florida Division of Emergency Management contracted with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Florida Geological Survey to produce a map depicting the state’s vulnerability to sinkhole formation. The three-year project began with a pilot study in three northern Florida counties: Columbia, Hamilton and Suwannee. Utilizing the statistical modeling method Weights of Evidence, results from the pilot study yielded a 93 percent success rate of …


Creation Of A Map Of Paleozoic Bedrock Springsheds In Southeast Minnesota, Jeffrey A. Green, E. Calvin Alexander Jr. Oct 2015

Creation Of A Map Of Paleozoic Bedrock Springsheds In Southeast Minnesota, Jeffrey A. Green, E. Calvin Alexander Jr.

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Springs are groundwater discharge points that serve as vital coldwater sources for streams in southeast Minnesota. The springs generally emanate from Paleozoic carbonate and siliciclastic bedrock aquifers. Use of systematic dye tracing began in the 1970s and continues through the present as a standard method for investigating karst hydrology and to map springsheds,. The work was accelerated in 2007 because of increased funding from the State of Minnesota’s Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. A compilation springshed map of dye traces conducted over the last several decades has been assembled for the region. In southeast Minnesota, the springs are the …


Using Electrical Resistivity Imaging To Characterize Karst Hazards In Southeastern Minnesota Agricultural Settings, Toby Dogwiler, Blake Lea Oct 2015

Using Electrical Resistivity Imaging To Characterize Karst Hazards In Southeastern Minnesota Agricultural Settings, Toby Dogwiler, Blake Lea

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Much of the Driftless Area of southeastern Minnesota is underlain by karstified carbonate bedrock. Land use in this karst terrain is dominated by agriculture, including row crop and dairy operations. The karst in this region is often mantled with up to 15 m of soil and unconsolidated sediments. As a result, underlying karst hazards such as incipient sinkholes are often hidden until they are suddenly revealed by the collapse of subsurface voids. Regionally, the economics of the dairy industry is causing a trend toward the consolidation and expansion of existing operations. As concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) or feedlots expand, …


Characterization Of Karst Terrain Using Geophysical Methods Based On Sinkhole Analysis: A Case Study Of The Anina Karstic Region (Banat Mountains, Romania), Laurentiu Artugyan, Adrian C. Ardelean, Petru Urdea Oct 2015

Characterization Of Karst Terrain Using Geophysical Methods Based On Sinkhole Analysis: A Case Study Of The Anina Karstic Region (Banat Mountains, Romania), Laurentiu Artugyan, Adrian C. Ardelean, Petru Urdea

Sinkhole Conference 2015

To understand karst topography, we must determine both the nature and the factors that are defining dissolution processes in soluble rocks, as well as the drainage network resulting from these processes. The goal of this paper is to understand the underground drainage direction configuration and, also, the factors that are involved in surface water drainage of the Anina karstic region. In this study we used two complementary geophysical methods, spontaneous potential (SP) and ground penetrating radar (GPR), applied in 5 sinkholes with a funnel shaped aspect. Four of these sinkholes are circular and one of them is elongated NW-SE direction. …


Down The Rabbit Hole: Identifying Physical Controls On Sinkhole Formation In The Uk, Tamsin Green Oct 2015

Down The Rabbit Hole: Identifying Physical Controls On Sinkhole Formation In The Uk, Tamsin Green

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Heavy precipitation in the UK in February 2014 induced ground subsidence and consequently a rapid increase in the frequency of sinkhole occurrences. These new sinkhole collapses emphasise the need to further analyse the causes of the increased occurrence by investigating the relative importance of various surficial factors. Malham and the Mendips are two areas of particular interest, since both are underlain by limestone bedrock and are susceptible to subsidence. This is due to limestone being primarily permeable in joints, and so it dissolves to form an extensive network of karstic caves. It was therefore useful to compare two sites of …


Tracking Of Karst Contamination Using Alternative Monitoring Technologies: Hidden River Cave Kentucky, Caren Raedts, Christopher Smart Oct 2015

Tracking Of Karst Contamination Using Alternative Monitoring Technologies: Hidden River Cave Kentucky, Caren Raedts, Christopher Smart

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Karst groundwater contamination presents great challenges for efficient monitoring because of rapid, discrete transport and the diversity of contaminants. Here a low cost approach is described and applied to Hidden River Cave, Kentucky, where a long history of contamination has been experienced. Local knowledge was acquired through informal interviews and coupled with observations of contaminant residues, faunal distributions and fluorescence spectra in the cave. The resulting patterns were interpreted using Google Earth and Street View to identify specific contaminant sources in the affected sub-catchment of the cave. Despite success in matching contaminant sources with the contamination history and pattern, the …


Karst Influence In The Creation Of A Pfc Megaplume, Virginia Yingling Oct 2015

Karst Influence In The Creation Of A Pfc Megaplume, Virginia Yingling

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Perfluorochemicals (PFCs) are fully-fluorinated organic chemicals used to produce a wide range of industrial and commercial products. Their extreme persistence and mobility in the environment and nearly ubiquitous presence in humans and wildlife has raised serious concerns regarding their environmental and human health effects. In the 1940s to 1970s, PFC-bearing wastes were disposed of in three unlined landfills in Washington County, Minnesota. The resulting co-mingled PFC plumes created a “megaplume” that contaminated over 250 km2 of groundwater and four major drinking water aquifers; affecting eight municipal water supply systems and thousands of private wells. Site investigations revealed that karst features, …


Evaluation Of Veterinary Pharmaceuticals And Iodine For Use As A Groundwater Tracer In Hydrologic Investigation Of Contamination Related To Dairy Cattle Operations, Larry Boot Pierce, Honglin Shi Oct 2015

Evaluation Of Veterinary Pharmaceuticals And Iodine For Use As A Groundwater Tracer In Hydrologic Investigation Of Contamination Related To Dairy Cattle Operations, Larry Boot Pierce, Honglin Shi

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Standard groundwater tracers such as Rhodamine WT, Fluorescein, Eosin and Tinopal CBX effectively provide a snapshot of hydrological conditions over a brief period of time and in a tightly controlled setting. However, in complex environmental situations with multiple potential sources, groundwater hydrologists are often seeking groundwater tracers that have extended longevity in the natural environment and the ability to directly pinpoint source locations. After reviewing operations of the nearby dairy it was determined that emerging contaminants, specifically two bovine veterinary pharmaceuticals (antibiotics), cephapirin sodium (CEPNa) and cephapirin benzathine (CEPB), and a sanitation agent, elemental Iodine (I) may have potential as …


Seeps And Springs At A Platteville “Observatory” On The River Bluffs, Bj Bonin, Greg Brick, Julia R. Steenberg Oct 2015

Seeps And Springs At A Platteville “Observatory” On The River Bluffs, Bj Bonin, Greg Brick, Julia R. Steenberg

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Residential building construction along the Mississippi River bluffs in the 1970s created a unique enclosed outcrop of the Late Ordovician Platteville Formation at Lilydale, Minnesota. This outcrop was examined in early 2013 after a newly-formed spring flooded an elevator shaft the previous year, drawing attention to the foundation conditions. The Lexington Riverside property is a six story condominium complex constructed within the top of the bluff. A two-level underground parking garage was built into the bluff. Bedrock was mechanically excavated to accommodate the construction of the building, creating an unweathered rock surface. The space between the structure and the excavated …


Using Nitrate, Chloride, Sodium, And Sulfate To Calculate Groundwater Age, Kimm Crawford, Terry Lee Oct 2015

Using Nitrate, Chloride, Sodium, And Sulfate To Calculate Groundwater Age, Kimm Crawford, Terry Lee

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Regression analysis is used to identify monotonic trends to assign water age using ion data from two large well water databases from southeast Minnesota (SE MN). Nitrate (NO3-N), chloride (Cl), sodium (Na), and sulfate (SO4) ions in the commonly used aquifers in SE MN can be used as groundwater tracers since they are either entirely or partly anthropogenic in their sources, their loading occurs on a regional scale, and they are almost entirely conserved. Ion concentrations over time are used to establish six trend patterns. Two patterns are unchanging (background and stable above background), and four are changing (linear up, …


Conduit Flow In The Cambrian Lone Rock Formation, Southeast Minnesota, U.S.A., John D. Barry, Jeffrey A. Green, Julia R. Steenberg Oct 2015

Conduit Flow In The Cambrian Lone Rock Formation, Southeast Minnesota, U.S.A., John D. Barry, Jeffrey A. Green, Julia R. Steenberg

Sinkhole Conference 2015

The karst lands of southeast Minnesota contain more than one hundred trout streams that receive perennial discharge from Paleozoic bedrock springs. Several of the Paleozoic bedrock units that provide discharge are karst aquifers. Field investigations into the flow characteristics of these formations have been conducted using fluorescent dyes to map groundwater springsheds and characterize groundwater flow velocities for use in water resource protection. Recent field work has focused on the Cambrian Lone Rock Formation, a siliciclastic unit consisting of very fine-grained sandstone and siltstone with minor beds of shale and dolostone. The formation is mapped within tributary valleys of the …


Human Impacts On Water Quality In Coldwater Spring, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Sophie M. Kasahara, E. Calvin Alexander Jr., Scott C. Alexander Oct 2015

Human Impacts On Water Quality In Coldwater Spring, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Sophie M. Kasahara, E. Calvin Alexander Jr., Scott C. Alexander

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Coldwater Spring in Minneapolis, Minnesota was the water supply for Fort Snelling from the 1840s to 1920. The spring site has been declared a sacred site by some federally recognized Native American tribes. The site is managed by the National Park Service. This project has monitored the water chemistry of Coldwater Spring to document human impacts on the spring’s water quality. Temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, pH and anions were monitored weekly and cations and alkalinity monitored monthly at Coldwater Spring and the adjacent Wetland A from 15 February 2013 through 18 January 2015. Coldwater Spring’s water flows through fractures in …


Karst Hydrogeologic Investigation Of Trout Brook, Joel T. Groten, E. Calvin Alexander Jr. Oct 2015

Karst Hydrogeologic Investigation Of Trout Brook, Joel T. Groten, E. Calvin Alexander Jr.

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Trout Brook in the Miesville Ravine County Park of Dakota County Minnesota is the trout stream with the highest nitrate concentration in the karst region of southeastern Minnesota. Water quality data from 1985 and 1995 (Spong, 1995) and from 2001, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014, collected by the Dakota County Soil and Water Conservation District (Dakota SWCD, 2014) document an increasing level of nitrate in Trout Brook. A karst hydrogeologic investigation was designed to measure nitrate levels at sampling points along the stream and to increase our understanding of the source and movement of nitrates throughout the length of Trout …


Tracer Studies Conducted Nearly Two Decades Apart Elucidate Groundwater Movement Through A Karst Aquifer In The Frederick Valley Of Maryland, Keith A. White, Michael K. Cobb, Thomas Aley, Ethan Weikel Oct 2015

Tracer Studies Conducted Nearly Two Decades Apart Elucidate Groundwater Movement Through A Karst Aquifer In The Frederick Valley Of Maryland, Keith A. White, Michael K. Cobb, Thomas Aley, Ethan Weikel

Sinkhole Conference 2015

A pair of groundwater tracer studies at a single karst test site were completed 18 years apart. The results of these studies have provided evidence of both relatively rapid advective transport via conduits and an extreme capacity for dye storage and retardation. The tracer results, coupled with other subsurface investigation data, are used to develop a conceptual model for groundwater movement through this karst aquifer in the Frederick Valley of Maryland, as well as identify implications for remediation. Three fluorescent tracer dyes used in the initial study were detected in several background monitoring locations established for the second study conducted …


Hydrogeological Dynamic Variability In The Lomme Karst System (Belgium) As Evidenced By Tracer Tests Results (Karag Project), Amaël Poulain, Gaëtan Rochez, Vincent Hallet Oct 2015

Hydrogeological Dynamic Variability In The Lomme Karst System (Belgium) As Evidenced By Tracer Tests Results (Karag Project), Amaël Poulain, Gaëtan Rochez, Vincent Hallet

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Paleozoic carbonate aquifers represent major groundwater resources in Belgium. Karstification processes affect most of them and Belgium counts many hydrologically active karst networks. Given the intrinsic vulnerability of such geological objects, comprehensive studies are required in order to improve their protection and management. The KARAG project (Karst Aquifer ReseArch by Geophysic, 2013-2017) aims to identify the specific dynamic of karst aquifers by using geophysical and hydrogeological tools. This research is funded by the Belgium National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) and conducted by the University of Namur, University of Mons and the Royal Observatory of Belgium. The LKS – Lomme …