During the Spring semester, 2000, the University of Arizona Geophysics Field
Camp (GEN/GEOS 416/516 class) conducted geophysical surveys in the vicinity of the
United Musical Instruments facility near Nogales, Arizona. This site is a super-fund site,
due to the presence of contaminants, including TCE, in the ground water. The
contaminants are presumed to have come from cleaning and electroplating solutions,
which had been dumped into a small pond on the UMI property. The U.S. Geological
Survey provided the funding for our study. The objective was to determine subsurface
structural information that would help interpret possible future movement of the
contaminant plume.
Transient electromagnetic (TEM) data were most useful for interpreting the
subsurface geohydrology. Water table was found at a depth of approximately 30 meters,
north of the UMI building. A particularly interesting feature in the TEM data was a high-resistivity
anomaly and an associated low-resistivity anomaly 10 to 1 00 meters northeast
of the UMI building. We interpret the high-resistivity anomaly as possibly being due to
an impermeable levee that was associated with a buried stream channel and the low-resisitivity
anomaly as possibly being due to the pooling of conductive contaminated
fluids against the impermeable levee.
DC resistivity surveys were dominated by cultural coupling, which was pervasive
m the survey area. Magnetic readings were used to help locate potential cultural
interference. Gravity surveys indicated a low-density anomaly, which may be due to a
buried stream channel. This feature could be related to the features mapped with the
TEM surveys. The seismic survey indicated progressively more compacted and
cemented alluvium, overlying the Nogales formation. The seismic data did not provide
any direct information about the geohydrology of the area
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/624617 |
| Date | 07 May 2000 |
| Creators | Bishop, Bradley P., Casto, Daniel W., Chama, Mukonde, Heinecke, Justin M., Henley, Michael L., Malsom, Andrew A., Mason, Mark S., Miller, Alisa C., Mwewa, David C., Potts, K. Greg, Rice, Andrew W., Standridge, Larry R., Sternberg, Ben K., Ward, William J., Westervelt, Jason V. |
| Contributors | University of Arizona |
| Publisher | LASI Laboratory for Advanced Surface Imaging, The University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ) |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book |
| Rights | Copyright © Arizona Board of Regents |
| Relation | LASI-00-1, http://www.lasi.arizona.edu/ |
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