Groundwater
Groundwater is an important topic in Australia and increasingly globally. Recently there have been some exciting new developments in geophysics to help directly detect and characterise groundwater. For example, there is a new geophysical technique that can directly detect groundwater and also determine the porosity and permeability of the ground containing the water. Whether your need to finding it, get rid of it, working out where it is coming from and/or going to, geophysics can help.
High resolution helicopter-borne EM surveys are increasingly being used to map aquifers, pollution plumes, groundwater levels, etc. For example, the SkyTem system has recently been used to fly large tracts of the Ord River Basin in WA and the Murray Darling Basin in NSW and Victoria as well as overseas in Canada and Denmark.
There has been recent discussion on the possible monitoring of groundwater levels within coal seam gas (aka coal bed methane or CBM) projects; ‘4D’ AEM surveys are expected to prove a very cost-effective way to achieve this, if the expected regulations comes into being.
