Scientific foundation for Land Restoration decisions at Contaminated Sites
NERL Land Preservation and Restoration Research Areas
-Contaminated Sites-Resource Conservation and Waste Management
ORD works to help the Agency achieve its goal of Land Restoration through research directed towards identifying and reducing scientific uncertainties associated with decisions about mitigation, management and long-term stewardship at contaminated sites. This research generally results in development and application of tools, models and methods for use by decision-makers. Because the nature of client decisions and associated uncertainties is generally dependent upon the nature of the contaminated environmental medium, ORD and NERL contaminated sites research is planned in medium-related themes of (1) sediments; (2) groundwater; (3) multimedia. A fourth theme, analytical methods, cuts across the others. Key science questions common to these themes include:
- What are the exposure pathways of contaminants?
- How do contaminants move across exposure media?
- How can stakeholders best evaluate contamination and target clean-up efforts?