Features and Capabilities of Transport Pathways

Having provided a quick overview of the basic components of the Contaminant Transport Module in the previous section, in this section the computational features of the primary component, the transport pathway, are outlined in somewhat greater detail, as this will provide an indication of the kinds of processes that can be simulated by GoldSim.

GoldSim transport pathways represent physical components through which contaminant species can move (and/or be stored) such as aquifers, lakes, sediments, surface soil compartments, and the atmosphere. In order to represent the wide variety of transport pathways that you may wish to simulate, GoldSim provides five different kinds of pathway elements:

• Cell pathways

• Aquifer pathways

• Pipe pathways

• External pathways

• Network pathways

These pathways can be used interchangeably within a model. Each of these four pathway elements is discussed briefly in the topics below.