Environmental geophysics: Conceptual models, challenges, and the way forward

摘要

Environmental geophysics deals with issues ranging from local-scale fluid-rock changes to large-scale climatic changes caused by anthropogenic activities and natural processes. It is enjoying rapid growth for two reasons: (1) the present sociopolitical climate of increasing awareness of the effect of man's past activities on the environment; and (2) new technological and multidimensional modeling advances that may have brought geophysical methods close to their theoretical resolving power. However, there are some outstanding problems: Realistic whole-site multidimensional imaging of contaminated land, understanding fluid-rock interactions, optimal data integration, and remote prediction of flow and subsoil compositions are currently the most pressing scientific issues.