Municipal Waste Dump Geophysical Investigation

The proposed work is about the geophysical survey applied in three Italian waste dump (Savoia di Lucania and Pallareta in Basilicata region, Novellara in Emilia-Romagna Region). The Basilicata landfill are provided of HDPI liner while in the other one a compacted clay stratum is present at the bottom. In each site we carried out active and passive geophysical techniques: electrical resistivity tomographies (ERT), induced polarisation (IP), self potential (SP) and magnetic methods. The ERTs, inverted by using the Res2DInv software, provided information about the geometry of the waste basins where an HDPI liner is present. The IP results show high chargeability nuclei into the refuse indicated the metallic garbage cumuli. The SP signal is negative into the basins and slightly positive in the surrounding area. Moreover, the SP data show strong spikes at the borders of the basins. The SP data of Novellara waste dump (clay stratum coating) show positive values inside the basins. The magnetic method evaluates the dispersion of metallic garbage close to the waste dumps. Finally, the different acquired data allow to sketch the lateral and buried geometry of the waste basins and to infer their leachate-tight, at least where the HDPI liner is present.