Welcome to the course! In the Course Overview section, you will find general information about the course as well as instructions on how to navigate the course. In the lectures for this week, we will start with history. We look at a general brief history of groundwater remediation, and then a specific history of MNA featuring a list of the key protocols from 1994 to 2015. Special topics include active remediation vs. MNA, and Neat New MNA Technologies, and how degradation, storage, and dilution are all part of the MNA story.

In this series of lectures, we will learn when biodegradation can or cannot occur and what conditions are conducive to faster degradation.

In this series of lectures, we will focus on the principles of abiotic degradation and discuss how these processes support monitored natural attenuation. You will be learning about the key reactions and minerals that are involved in abiotic degradation. We will also be covering what methods are used to determine if abiotic degradation is relevant at a particular site, and the rates at which these reactions may be occurring

In these lectures, we will focus on the idea that storage of contaminants in geologic media as a potential natural attenuation mechanism. Under this scenario, certain contaminants diffuse in low permeability media such as silt, clay, and limestone and then eventually reenter the aquifer by a process called back diffusion. Like sorption, this process is not destructive, but attenuates a contaminant plume by sequestering some of the initial loading and then slowly releases it over long time scales. You will learn about diffusion vs. dispersion, see case studies in the lab and field, learn how to sample and model this process, and hear the latest research about degradation processes associated with matrix diffusion.