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- Title
UTILIZING GROUND PENETRATING RADAR TO CHARACTERIZE GYPSUM KARST FEATURES IN EDDY COUNTY, NEW MEXICO AND CULBERSON COUNTY, TEXAS.
- Authors
Brown, Wesley A.; Stafford, Kevin W.; Melville, Trina K.
- Abstract
Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has become a popular geophysical tool for locating subsurface karst features such as cavities, conduits and solutionally enlarged fractures. This study examines the usefulness of GPR for identifying buried sinkholes in gypsum and characterizing the sinkhole origins as either solutional or collapse. The GPR data were collected from multiple sites in the Castile Formation outcrop area in Culberson County, Texas and Eddy County, New Mexico. A Pulse EKKO 100 system manufactured by Sensors and Software Inc. with an antenna center frequency 100 MHz in the common offset technique mode was used to conduct GPR profiling. Resulting profiles showed a pattern of radar reflections which reveal a possible series of filled sinkholes. Analyses of the collapse sinkholes show that they are the result of upward stoping subsurface voids, which is characterized by large electrical contrast between the unbroken host rock and the infilled collapse. The sinkholes thought to have originated due to solution show surface disturbance on radargrams. The solutional sinkholes are formed by epigene processes and collapse structures represent failure into an underlying void, which may have formed by hypogene or epigene processes. Hypogene karst processes dominate the area, thus most collapse sinkholes are likely associated with surficial breaching of pre-existing hypogene cave by surface denudation.
- Subjects
EDDY County (N.M.); CULBERSON County (Tex.); GYPSUM; KARST; GROUND penetrating radar; SINKHOLES; GEOPHYSICAL surveys
- Publication
Texas Journal of Science, 2017, Vol 69, Issue 1, p21
- ISSN
0040-4403
- Publication type
Article