US-Nepal Planning Visit: Surface Electrical Resistivity Surveys as a Discriminant of High-Arsenic Groundwater Risk, Terai, Nepal

描述：该奖项支持美国-尼泊尔计划访问：地表电阻率调查作为尼泊尔特莱高砷地下水风险的判别。PI Thomas Brikowski建议对尼泊尔的Terai平原进行一次规划/概念测试访问，以评估地表地球物理方法在预测高砷地下水风险方面的效用。允许砷在地下水中运移的地质条件正开始被了解，并且可以使用诸如电阻率（ER）和感应极化（IP）等地表地球物理技术直接探测到。项目将评估实地环境影响评估/环境影响评估调查的表现，从而确定旨在确定地下水低砷地点的地表地球物理特征的更大项目的成功可能性。范围：尼泊尔的合作研究人员在描绘特莱几个省高砷地下水高度变化的时空分布方面取得了重大进展。美国团队，包括PI，博士后和研究生，将收集他们提出的方法可行性的初步数据，然后制定全面的提案提交给国家科学基金会。最终，这项研究具有解决亚洲砷危机的潜力，通过确定可能适合钻探的安全水域，不仅在尼泊尔，而且在整个南亚，数百万生活在喜马拉雅山热带外带平原的人通过地下水暴露于慢性砷中毒。

Description: This award supports the US-Nepal Planning Visit: Surface Electrical Resistivity Surveys as a Discriminant of High-Arsenic Groundwater Risk, Terai, Nepal. PI Thomas Brikowski proposes to make a planning/ test-of-concept visit to the Terai plains of Nepal to evaluate the utility of surface geophysical methods in predicting the risk of high-arsenic groundwater. The geologic conditions allowing arsenic to be mobilized in groundwater are beginning to be understood and may be directly detectable using surface geophysical techniques such as electrical resistivity (ER) and induced polarization (IP). The PI will assess the performance of ER/IP surveys in the field, thereby establishing the probability of success for a larger project aimed at determining the surface geophysical signatures of low groundwater arsenic sites.Scope: Cooperating researchers in Nepal have made substantial progress in characterizing the highly variable temporal and spatial distributrion of high arsenic groundwater in several provinces in the Terai. The US team, which includes the PI, a postdoc, and graduate student, will gather preliminary data on the feasibility of their proposed approach prior to developing a full-scale proposal for submission to NSF. Ultimately, this research holds the potential to address the Asian arsenic crisis by locating areas of probable safe water suitable for drilling, not only in Nepal but throughout all of southern Asia, where millions of people living on the tropical outwash plains of the Himalayas are exposed to chronic arsenic poisoning via groundwater.