Assessment of Variability in the Soil Sampling

Mahmoud Meskar, Majid Sartaj, Julio Angel Infante Sedano

In the proceedings of: GeoOttawa 2017: 70th Canadian Geotechnical Conference; 12th joint with IAH-CNC

Session: Geoenvironmental I

ABSTRACT: Soil contamination is not only a sanitary issue, but is also an economical concern due to associated high costs. In the case of site re-development, the quality of borrow materials must be properly assessed for their possible environmental impacts on a target area through a best-sampling procedure. This research aimed at comparing two main sampling protocols including modified composite sampling and modified ranked set sampling. Variations among different locations and depths were observed, with 1600% change in concentrations and coefficient of variation of up to 150% for points which are not away more than 25 meters. These facts show that locations and number of samples have a profound effect on the level of observed contaminations. Based on this research, discrete samples show mostly higher variations and have often greater concentrations than composite samples. Therefore, composite sampling could be potentially a better representative instead of discrete sampling for the conditions of the site which was assessed.

RÉSUMÉ: La contamination des sols n'est pas seulement un problème sanitaire, mais aussi économique en raison des coûts élevés concernant leurs impacts environnementaux possibles sur la zone cible avec une procédure d'échantillonnage optimale. Cette recherche visait comparer deux protocoles d'échantillonnage; l'échantillonnage composite modifié et l'échantillonnage réglé classé modifié. Des variations entre divers endroits et profondeurs ont été observées, environ 1600% pour les concentrations et un coefficient de variation allant jusqu'à 150% pour des points à moins de 25 mètres de contaminations observées. Basé sur cette recherche, les échantillons discrets montrent des variations approximativement plus élevées et des concentrations approximativement plus grandes que les échantillons composites. Par conséquence, l'échantillonnage

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