Understanding Ground Penetrating Radar Applications

At times, when around non-university graduates, I felt quite smug knowing I had something they didn't. It was only when my boyfriend would come home and talks about his work as a geologist, or rather a geologist's assistant that I felt insanely 'dumb'.

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While I knew about Freud and Kinney, he knew about seismology and ground penetrating radars. He would sit at the table and explain these procedures to me in simple words, making me gaze in awe and loathing at his coolness. The ground penetrating radar was so intriguing.

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This ground penetrating radar (GPR) is, as the name suggests, a means of penetrating the ground with several radars to determine whether or not an object is buried underneath the stone, ice or other structures. It also identifies any alterations in the material, and any voids or cracks.

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But how? A question I found myself asking numerous times. Simple, he would say. The radar pulses image the subsurface and use high levels of electromagnetic frequencies to be sent into the subsurface. However, the range of the electromagnetic pulse is measured on a spectrum and is limited by the conductivity of the ground.

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I asked him again, what does he mean? He said that if conductivity is high, the penetration depth is low because the electromagnetic energy disappears into the substructure's heat causing a loss of signal.

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GPR are easy to use, safe and more sophisticated than most methods in geology. I wish I had more access to them in my studies.

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