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International Conference on Soil and Ground Water Contamination and Cleanup in Arid Countries
Sultan Qaboos Unversity, January 20-23 2003
Synopsis
Anthropogenic practices such as excessive extraction, secondary salinization, sea water intrusion, and contamination from landfills, waste repositories and leaky containers can greatly impact soil and water quality, especially in arid and semi-arid regions with little potential for natural precipitation-induced attenuation. An integrative approach and iterative improvements in our understanding of pertinent phenomena at all scales - from Stokes level microhydrodynamics to watershed scale monitoring and control, from rapid transport through a laboratory column to century-long trends in solute accumulation, from neutral tracers in homogeneous sands to reactive multi-species transport in hierarchical continua of aggregated soils or karstic aquifers - are a pre-requisite to any geotechnical or engineering actions and for the sustainable use of soil and groundwater resources. Identification of contaminants, their containment, sequestration, removal, or in situ inactivation requires a thorough understanding of all relevant physical, chemical and biological processes in the subsurface subject to data resource, financial and societal constraints on implementing clean-up measures. This Conference will provide a unique opportunity for scientists, engineers and managers to combine their approaches, debate the shifting paradigms on sustainability of natural resources, share the achievements and gaps in soil-water protection endeavours, and demonstrate products and software. The Conference will facilitate building a stronger network of experts at regional and international levels.
Topics
The conference covers a wide range of topics:
- Management and decision making in conservation and remediation as components of soil and groundwater sustainability
- Soil and groundwater vulnerability assesment
- Integration of physical models, field studies and experimental techniques
- Vadose zone salinization - assesment, modeling and reclamation
- Sea water encroachment and its mitigation in coastal aquifers
- Combating contamination of the geosphere by the petroleum industry
- Leakage from lagoons and evaporation ponds - natural attenuation versus geotechnical solutions
- Pore-scale phenomena, multiphase flow and NAPL sources
- Computer sowtware packages and analytical models as predictive tools
- Remediation technologies and protocols
Other topics related to the soil-water cosmos may also be considered.
Conference Papers
Use the following links to download the table of content (Part1 - Part2) of the volume of J. Agricultural Sciences, SQU containing key-note full papers, key-note short communications, key-note abstracts and abstracts of general presentations in the International Conference on Soil and Groundwater Contamination & Clean-up in Arid Countries, 20-23 January 2003 organized by Sultan Qaboos University. The final volume of the Journal and Program will be available at the Registration desk. Click here to download a Final Programme of the conference.
Scientific Committee
| Prof. P.Adler, Institiut De Physique Du Globe De Paris (France) | Prof. P.Grathwohl, University of Tubingen (Germany) |
| Prof. B.J.Alloway, University of Reading (UK) | Prof. S.M.Hassanizadeh, Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) |
| Prof.D.E.Elrick, University of Guelph (Canada) | Dr. B.Hunt, University Canterbury (New Zealand) |
| Dr. Akihiko Hirayama, Shimizu Corporation (Japan) | Dr. R.Lenhard, INEEL (USA) |
| Prof. W.Kinzelbach, ETH (Switzerland) | Prof. G. de Marsily, Unversity Paris-VI (France) |
| Prof. D.N.Lerner, University of Sheffield (UK) | Dr.M. Moench, Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (USA) |
| Prof. J.Nieber, University of Minnesota (USA) | Prof. D.Or, Utah State University (USA) |
| Dr. C.Otto, CSIRO (Australia) | Prof. M. Sauter, University of Jena (Germany) |
| Prof. S.Serrano, University of Kentucky (USA) | Prof. A. M. Shahalam, KISR (Kuwait) |
| Prof. M.Sherif, UAE University (UAE) | Prof. A.K.Sinha, University of Rajasthan Jaipur, (India) |
| Prof. O.Strack, University of Minnesota (USA) | Dr. M.R.Thumarukudy, PDO (Oman) |
| Dr. M.Th. van Genuchten, USDA-ARS (USA) | Prof. E.G.Youngs, Cranfield University (UK) |
