In the State of Hawaii, there is an ongoing effort to improve a chemical leaching tool that illustrates regional groundwater vulnerability to various types of soil contaminants. Pesticides are a group of chemicals included in the initial target list and their attenuation capacity in soils is described in the leaching tool through sorption and degradation. Modern agricultural products also contain different kinds of volatile organic compounds which pose a concern to the public through atmospheric emissions from soils. Therefore, the existing tool has been recently improved to address the reduced leaching loss of these chemicals in soils via volatilization. Now, this improvement effort is shifting toward pharmaceuticals that explore additional subsurface processes such as ionization and plant uptake. With the chemical properties of individual pollutant groups, this study will introduce their mode of action in soils and how proposed theories can be smoothly implemented in a geographic information system.

Chemical leaching tool in Hawaii: Historical development, recent progress, and next challenges

248th National Meeting (2014)

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