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To determine and map the subsurface conditions of a dam, a 2D electrical resistivity tomography study was carried out within the two flanks of Zaria dam at Shika. This was done to ascertain if the variations in the volume of water content in the dam is due to an anomalous seepage beneath the subsurface or seasonal effects. On the basis of the interpretation of the acquired data, various zones of relatively uniform resistivity values were mapped and identified. The first zone is characterized by moderate resistivity values of 150 -600 ohm-m. It represents unsaturated topsoil with thicknesses varying from 1 -4.5 m. The second (intermediate depth) resistivity zone, with values ranging from 5 -100 ohm-m and thickness varying from 3.5 -10 m, represents a silt clay layer with high moisture content. The third resistivity zone represents fairly weathered granite and is characterized by relatively high resistivity values ranging from 700 -6000 ohm-m. The available borehole log data correlated well with the pseudo-sections in relation to the obtained resistivity values and depth. Zones of relatively low resistivity within the bedrock are interpreted to represent potential seepage pathways. Hence, this geophysical method can be successfully used to delineate and map these seepage pathways within the subsurface of the earth dam.

We have described a method of obtaining useful information from noisy seismic refraction data. The simple method, tagged beam-forming technique, is based on the basic time-distance equations of refraction seismology. It involves basically of introducing relative time delays to individual seismic traces of seismic refraction spread to correct for the non-coincidence of the incidence seismic energy at different geophones, and averaging the traces to obtain the beam. The assumption here is that the signal is coherent between the geophones while the noise is random, and for groups of geophones corresponding to the same refraction segments of the travel time curve, this basic assumption is valid. The process of beam forming therefore leads to improvement in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and correct determination of the intercept times which are subsequently used to compute other geologic layer parameters. The ability of the applied technique to filter out or minimize random noise has been tested using a modified random number routine. The performance test on computation of geologic layer parameters using very noisy synthetic data reveals that the method is still very reliable even with very poor quality data having SNR as small as 0.05

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