No abstract

Vertical radar profiling (VRP) is a single-borehole geophysical technique, in which the receiver antenna is located within a borehole and the transmitter antenna is placed at one or various offsets from the borehole. Today, VRP surveying is primarily used to derive 1D velocity models by inverting the arrival times of direct waves. Using field data collected at a well-constrained test site in Germany, we evaluated a VRP workflow relying on the analysis of direct-arrival traveltimes and amplitudes as well as on imaging reflection events. To invert our VRP traveltime data, we used a global inversion strategy resulting in an ensemble of acceptable velocity models, and thus, it allowed us to appraise uncertainty issues in the estimated velocities as well as in porosity models derived via petrophysical translations. In addition to traveltime inversion, the analysis of direct-wave amplitudes and reflection events provided further valuable information regarding subsurface properties and architecture. The used VRP amplitude preprocessing and inversion procedures were adapted from ray-based crosshole ground-penetrating radar (GPR) attenuation tomography and resulted in an attenuation model, which can be used to estimate variations in electrical resistivity. Our VRP reflection imaging approach relied on corridor stacking, which is a well-established processing sequence in vertical seismic profiling. The resulting reflection image outlines bounding layers and can be directly compared to surface-based GPR reflection profiling. Our results of the combined analysis of VRP, traveltimes, amplitudes, and reflections were consistent with independent core and borehole logs as well as GPR reflection profiles, which enabled us to derive a detailed hydrostratigraphic model as needed, for example, to understand and model groundwater flow and transport.

In many hydrological applications, ground‐wave velocity measurements are increasingly used to map and monitor shallow soil water content. In this study, we propose an automated spectral velocity analysis method to determine the direct ground‐wave (DGW) velocity from common midpoint (CMP) or multi‐offset ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) data. The method introduced in this paper is a variation of the well‐known spectral velocity analysis for seismic and GPR reflection events where velocity spectra are computed using different coherency measures along hyperbolas following the normal moveout model. Here, the unnormalized cross‐correlation is computed between waveforms across data gathers that are corrected with a linear moveout equation using a predefined range of velocities. Peaks in the resulting velocity spectra identify linear events in the GPR data gathers like DGW events and allow for estimating the corresponding velocities. In addition to obtaining a DGW velocity measurement, we propose a robust method to estimate the associated velocity uncertainties based on the width of the peak in the calculated velocity spectrum. Our proposed method is tested on synthetic data examples to evaluate the influence of subsurface velocity, surveying geometry and signal frequency on the accuracy of estimated ground‐wave velocities. In addition, we investigate the influence of such velocity uncertainties on subsequent soil water content estimates using an established petrophysical relationship. Furthermore, we apply our approach to analyse field data, which were collected across a test site in Canada to monitor a wide range of seasonal soil moisture variations. A comparison between our spectral velocity estimates and results derived from manually picked ground‐wave arrivals shows good agreement, which illustrates that our spectral velocity analysis is a feasible tool to analyse DGW arrivals in multi‐offset GPR data gathers in an objective and more automated manner.

Velocity models are essential to process two‐ and three‐dimensional ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) data. Furthermore, velocity information aids the interpretation of such data sets because velocity variations reflect important material properties such as water content. In many GPR applications, common midpoint (CMP) surveys are routinely collected to determine one‐dimensional velocity models at selected locations. To analyse CMP data gathers, spectral velocity analyses relying on the normal‐moveout (NMO) model are commonly employed. Using Dix’s formula, the derived NMO velocities can be further converted to interval velocities which are needed for processing and interpretation. Because of the inherent assumptions and limitations of such approaches, we investigate and propose an alternative procedure based on the global inversion of reflection travel‐times. We use a finite‐difference solver of the Eikonal equation to accurately solve the forward problem in combination with particle swarm optimization (PSO) to find one‐dimensional GPR velocity models explaining our data. Because PSO is a robust and efficient global optimization tool, our inversion approach includes generating an ensemble of representative solutions that allows us to analyse uncertainties in the model space. Using synthetic data examples, we test and evaluate our inversion approach to analyse CMP data collected across typical near‐surface environments. Application to a field data set recorded at a well‐constrained test site including a comparison to independent borehole and direct‐push data, further illustrates the potential of the proposed approach, which includes a straightforward and understandable appraisal of non‐uniqueness and uncertainty issues, respectively. We conclude that our methodology is a feasible and powerful tool to analyse GPR CMP data and allows practitioners and researchers to evaluate the reliability of CMP derived velocity models.