Tag Archives: septic

Liying Wang (Florida State University, lwang3@fsu.edu)
Ming Ye (Florida State University, mye@fsu.edu)
Paul Z. Lee (Florida Department of Environmental Protection, paul.lee@dep.state.fl.us)
Richard W. Hicks (Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Richard.w.hicks@dep.state.fl.us)

Download VZMOD

What does it do?

Nitrate, as a commonly identified groundwater and surface-water pollutant, is associated with a number of adverse health and environmental impacts. One major source of nitrate in the environment is due to wastewater treatment using Onsite Sewage Treatment and Disposal Systems (OSTDS) (a.k.a., septic systems), whose effluent is directly discharged into soils and subsequently groundwater. Therefore, it is important to simulate nitrogen transformation and transport in the vadose zone and groundwater due to septic systems. We have developed an ArcGIS-based Nitrate Load Estimation Toolkit (ArcNLET) to simulate nitrate fate and transport in groundwater and to estimate nitrate load from septic systems to surface water bodies such as lakes and rivers (read the ArcNLET blog). In this blog, we introduce VZMOD, Vadose Zone MODel, a recently developed software for simulating nitrogen transformation and transport in the vadose zone. VZMOD can be used as a pre-processor of ArcNLET to provide source plane concentrations of individual septic systems from the vadose zone to groundwater. Continue reading →