Monitoring of the leachate levels in a municipal solid waste landfill through full-waveform electrical tomographic data

One of the most critical issues of waste management is the possible negative impact of leachate on the surrounding environment. The leachate is a potentially highly polluting liquid arising from the infiltration of rainwater, which comes into contact with buried wastes. It is the main cause of contamination of groundwater and soil, but it can also trigger geotechnical instability for slope landfills. The objective of this work is to use full-waveform electrical tomographic data to detect and monitor the leachate accumulation zones at a municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill located in Central Italy on a steep slope. In this study, we present the results of the 2024 campaign in comparison with previous data (2019), to assess the effectiveness of the drainage network built in 2021 in the landfill. We also processed full-waveform raw data through a newly developed code based on Olsson et al. (2016). The 3D reconstruction of the geophysical inverted models allows the detection of leachate accumulation zones in the eastern part of the landfill with a similar layering compared with the previous results, but with an overall slight increase of resistivity which proves the success of the drainage network.