1. Techniques help monitor microbial remediation.
- Subjects
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BACTERIA , *ENVIRONMENTAL engineering , *METALLURGY , *POLLUTANTS - Abstract
The article focuses on techniques that help microbial remediation. Understanding how microbes clean up contaminants is difficult without a direct way to observe what the bugs are actually doing. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrate how two complementary geophysical techniques can monitor microbes that remediate metals in contaminated aquifers--without putting equipment below the ground. Historically, miners used the same techniques--complex resistivity and acoustic waves--to search for buried oil and mineral sources as deep as 10,000 meter in the past 20 years, environmental scientists have used these methods at the surface to locate underground pollutant plumes or characterize source points, explains Kenneth Hurst Williams, lead author on the research paper. This is the first effort to actively use the techniques to monitor changes brought about by microbial processes. Specifically, the researchers examine how the geophysical signatures change as sulfate-reducing microbes process metals and form mineral precipitates. These techniques can be run at the surface, cover areas similar to any football field, and have beer modified for a high degree of resolution in field tests to a depth of 10 meter, he adds.
- Published
- 2005