How the Contaminant Transport Module Documentation is Organized

The portion of the Help file describing the Contaminant Transport Module is divided into the following sections:

• Getting Started with the Contaminant Transport Module. The remainder of this section of this chapter discusses the information required for you to get started using the GoldSim Contaminant Transport Module, specifically, 1) suggestions for learning how to use the module; and 2) instructions for activating the module.

• Contaminant Transport Module Overview. This section provides an overview of the features and capabilities of the Contaminant Transport Module, summarizes the specialized contaminant transport elements, and outlines the steps required to build a contaminant transport model in GoldSim.

• Species and Media. This section describes how you define the basic building blocks of a contaminant transport simulation: 1) the contaminant species which are to be simulated; and 2) the environmental media (e.g., water, soil) in which these species are transported and stored.

• Transport Pathways. This section describes the fundamental component of a contaminant transport simulation, the transport pathway. A contaminant transport model is constructed by defining multiple transport pathways and linking them together into an interconnected network.

• Contaminant Sources. This section describes how you can introduce mass into a transport pathway network by defining one or more "sources", whose contaminant release rates are a function of a variety of user-defined properties.

• Receptors. This section describes how concentrations in various media within transport pathways can be converted to impacts (e.g., health risk, dose) to specified receptor groups (e.g., adults, children, farmers).

• Advanced Modeling Concepts. This section discusses a number of advanced contaminant transport topics, and will be of particular interest to experienced modelers. It includes discussions of modeling complex (high-order) chemical reactions, nonlinear chemical partitioning , spatial variability, and the dynamic linking of GoldSim to external codes (e.g., flow models, geochemical equilibrium models).

These sections describe what the program can do and how you make the program work. Most users, however, will also want to understand how the program carries out the calculations (i.e., what equations are being solved, what are the basic assumption inherent in these equations, and what numerical techniques are being used to solve the equations). This information is provided in the technical appendices to the Contaminant Transport Module User’s Guide.

The Help system includes all the information contained in the GoldSim Contaminant Transport Module User’s Guide, with the exception of the Technical Appendices.