Managing Soil Moisture on Waste Burial Sites in Arid Regions

In semiarid regions, where potential evapotranspiration greatly exceeds precipitation, it is theoretically to preclude water form reaching interred wastes by (i) providing a sufficient cap of soil to store precipitation that falls while plants are dormant and (ii) establishing sufficient plant cover to deplete soil moisture during the growing season, thereby emptying the water storage reservoir of the soil. Here we discuss the theory and rationale for such an approach an then present the results of a field study to test its efficacy at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) []