Self-Integrating Accumulators (SIA)

The Self-Integrating Accumulator (SIA) method measures the total losses of a wide range of chemical substances from the root zone or into the groundwater. It does not interfere with superficial activities like ploughing and samples all solutes of interest from the soil leachate.

The SIA are generally exchanged after a measurement period of 6 months or more. The sampled amount of solutes is quantified in the laboratory and results in an area representative value over the time integral, e.g. 50 kg/ha of nitrate-N from an agricultural field in a year or 1 kg/ha of lead in six months on a contaminated site. The method works for most cations and anions as well as for more or less hydrophobic organic contaminants like a range of pesticides, Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) or mineral oil components.

SIA during installation

It can be used to

• monitor and quantify acute leaching risks to groundwater
• as a success control after remediation action has been taken
• to compare several treatments with regard to their absolute power to enhance groundwater recharge quality.

The SIA method has been validated in tracer experiments. Administration, water providers and scientists from many institutes (see Clients) entrust us to apply our method to achieve their goals. The method is part of DIN-ISO 19715 (draft version 0.7) "Sampling of soil water to determine the chemical content and to assess the seepage load", which is in the process of making and will be published after the due revision.