Environmental characterization of military training ranges for munitions-related contaminants : understanding and minizing the environmental impacts of live-fire training

An important R&D effort was dedicated to the characterization of ranges and training areas and to the study of the environmental fate and the ecotoxicological impacts of munitions constituents in the last 20 years in Canada and the United States. Major environmental issues were identified, and the sources of munitions constituents in training ranges are better understood. Protocols were developed for collecting representative soil samples and their effective processing. In the last years, a large effort was dedicated to the measurement of the mass of munitions constituents deposited both at target impact areas and at firing positions, which led to a good estimation of source terms of contaminants. In Canadian ranges and training areas, efforts were also dedicated to characterize both surface and subsurface aquifers and geology, and detailed hydrogeological and geological mapping. All the data acquired over the last years have been used to build hazards and vulnerability maps, which can be combined to draw risk maps that represent great assets from a risk-management perspective. The next step is the development of environmentally sound solutions that will sustain military training and maintain force readiness. In order to achieve that goal, efforts are committed to the modification of actual live-firing activities to minimize their environmental adverse impacts. Finally, Canada is aiming at developing greener and insensitive munitions that will ease the environmental pressure. This paper is a summary of what has been done in North America toward understanding and minimizing the environmental footprint of munitions.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye