A Flexible Single Loop Setup for Water-Borne Transient Electromagnetic Sounding Applications

Abstract

Water-borne transient electromagnetic (TEM) soundings provide the means necessary to investigate the geometry and electrical properties of rocks and sediments below continental water bodies, such as rivers and lakes. Most water-borne TEM systems deploy separated magnetic transmitter and receiver loop antennas—typically in a central or offset configuration. These systems mostly require separated floating devices with rigid structures for both loop antennas. Here, we present a flexible single-loop TEM system, the light-weight design of which simplifies field procedures. Our system also facilitates the use of different geometries of the loop antenna permitting to adjust the depth of investigation (DOI) and the minimum sounding depth in the field. We measure the turn-off ramp with an oscilloscope and use the DOI to assess the minimum and maximum exploration depth of our single-loop TEM system, respectively. A reduction of the loop-antenna size improves early-time TEM data due to a reduced length of the turn-off ramp, whereas an increase of the loop-antenna size enhances the signal strength at late times, which allows to investigate deeper structures below the lake bed. We illustrate the capabilities of our system with a case study carried out at Lake Langau in Austria. Our results show that our system is capable of reaching a DOI of up to 50 m (with a maximum radius of the circular loop of 11.9 m), while it also resolves the water layer down to a minimum thickness of 6.8 m (when the radius is reduced to 6.2 m).