Advanced redox zonation of the San Pedro Sula alluvial aquifer (Honduras) using data fusion and multivariate geostatistics

The incorrect wastewater management and the land use distribution lead to severe environmental problems, creating heavy eutrophication condition in surface-water; when surface-water/groundwater relationships exist, the organic matter transferred to the aquifer oxidizes and triggers redox processes (i.e. Terminal Electron Accepting Processes, TEAPs), that provoke severe groundwater quality modifications and complicate its exploitation and management. For this reason, the definition of the redox zonation within an aquifer is an effective tool for the identification of the contamination sources and for the conceptual model refinement, when remediation strategies need to be planned. Although the redox processes are dynamic reactions, the aquifer redox zonation is generally aimed to identify homogenous zones, characterized by a predominant TEAP. To overcome this methodological approach, the Multi-Collocated Factorial Kriging (MCFK) was applied to redox-related physico-chemical parameters, which allowed identifying their spatial relationships at different scales, transferring this method from precision agriculture and soil science to hydrogeochemistry. The selected study area is the San Pedro Sula aquifer (Honduras), a multi-layer alluvial aquifer characterized by well-known surface-water/groundwater interactions and heavy eutrophicated streams. Here, high concentrations of Mn and Fe were found in the aquifer. The MCFK results identified a short-range (2300 m) factor, highlighting a strong relation between Mn concentrations and anoxic conditions, due to the organic matter transfer from eutrophicated surface-water into the aquifer. Simultaneously, the relationship between Fe and turbidity is related to a fine Fe(III) oxi-hydroxide colloidal phase, developed when different redox conditions of groundwater mix up in the wells. The long-range (6000 m) factor points out that Fe is related to redox processes at a wider scale, especially in the northern San Pedro Sula alluvial plain. These results are supported by both the Principal Component Analysis and the hydrogeochemical numerical modeling. As a result, different TEAPs occur simultaneously in contaminated areas, acting at multiple scales.