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While the top 100 meters of the subsurface mediates almost all interactions between humans, the biosphere, and groundwater supplies, this same region is one of least studied portions of the earth from a geophysical perspective.
Our group exploits high resolution geophysical methods including seismic, ground penetrating radar, and resistivity techniques to characterize the near-surface with applications to environmental and hydrologic problems.
One of our speacilties is the tomographic processing of environmental seismic and radar crosswell datasets, which at close well spacings can yield significant bandwidth (in excess of 5 Khz for seismic) and correspondingly high resolution images of P-wave velocity and dielectric properties. In the past we have collaborated with hydrogeologists interested in time-lapse radar tomography applied to imaging saline tracers and crosswell seismic tomography applied to site-scale characterization of lithologic units.
Our most recent environmental work focuses on integrating crosswell seismic and crosswell radar tomography for use in detecting and characterizing zones of Dense Non-Aqueous Phase Liquid (DNAPL) contamination in the subsurface, more specifically at the former Pinellas DOE site. Work on integration was motivated by the petrophysical non-uniqueness problems inherent in using only acoustic or dielectric properties to diagnose the presence of DNAPL.
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