Field Demonstrations of Innovative Subsurface Remediation and Characterization Technologies: Introduction

Groundwater pollution has become one of our most pervasive environmental problems, and remediating sites with contaminated groundwater has proven to be a formidable challenge. Remediation efforts are often limited by the complexity of the subsurface environment, and by our lack of knowledge of that environment. Recent research has focused on enhancing our understanding of the complex subsurface environment and on developing innovative technologies capable of handling these complexities. An important step in the evolution of a new technology is going beyond well-controlled laboratory experiments to testing the technology at the field scale (i.e., real world). The purpose of this volume is to present evaluations of selected innovative technologies that have undergone field demonstration testing. This volume also reports on recent advances in subsurface characterization techniques that are critical to the proper design of all technologies, and that can help assess the performance of these technologies.