Simulation of unsaturated flow and nonreactive solute transport in a heterogeneous soil at the field scale

A field-scale, unsaturated flow and solute transport experiment at the Las Cruces trench site in New Mexico was simulated as part of a blind'' modeling exercise to demonstrate the ability or inability of uncalibrated models to predict unsaturated flow and solute transport in spatially variable porous media. Simulations were conducted using a recently developed multiphase flow and transport simulator. Uniform and heterogeneous soil models were tested, and data from a previous experiment at the site were used with an inverse procedure to estimate water retention parameters. A spatial moment analysis was used to provide a quantitative basis for comparing the mean observed and simulated flow and transport behavior. The results of this study suggest that defensible predictions of waste migration and fate at low-level waste sites will ultimately require site-specific data for model calibration.