Identifying Natural Salinity on Sites with Elevated Salinity Concentrations

Lacey Harbicht, BSc

The ability to recognize natural salinity vs anthropogenic salinity in soil or groundwater is essential when identifying contaminants of potential concern (COPCs) onsite. Many times, salinity parameters above guidelines are marked as impacted, however, they may be elevated as a result of increased natural salinity in the area. Using a combination of salinity fingerprinting techniques and multivariate statistics, such as principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), the natural salinity profile can be identified and used to determine which samples with elevated salinity are natural. These techniques decrease the reliance on raw concentrations and increase the use of basic statistics to show spatial and temporal trends that will not only identify the natural salinity but also anthropogenic salinity plumes.

Identifying Natural Salinity on Sites with Elevated Salinity Concentrations by Lacey Harbicht is in full below. The presentation given at Rodney's Oyster House in the fall of 2018 at a clients only invitation event, touches on some of the tools utilized by Chemistry Matters to analyze salinity.

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