Non-destructive assessment of a buried rainwater cistern at the Carthusian Monastery ‘Vall de Crist’ (Spain, 14th century) derived by microgravimetric 2D modelling

Abad, Isabel Rodríguez; García, Francisco García; Abad, Irene Rodríguez; Blanco, Manuel Ramírez; Conesa, Jose Luis Montalvá; Marco, Javier Benlloch; Lladró, Rafael Capuz

doi:10.1016/j.culher.2006.10.009

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Microgravity is a geophysical method based on highly accurate measurement and interpretation of very small variations in the Earth's gravitational field, by which the subsurface archaeological features of contrasting or anomalous density can be detected. In spite of the time‐consuming data acquisition, processing and inherent ambiguity of source determination, the microgravity technique has been used for cavity detection at many archaeological sites during the past decades (Blížkovský, ; Lakshmanan and Montlucon, ; Cuss and Styles, ; Abad et al ., ; Pašteka et al ., ; Panisova and Pašteka, ; Padín et al ., ).…”

Section: Geophysical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microgravity and Ground‐penetrating Radar Investigations of Subsurface Features at the St Catherine's Monastery, Slovakia

Pánisová

Fraštia

Wunderlich

et al. 2013

Archaeological Prospection

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The ruins of the St Catherine's monastery complex, the largest sacral ruins in Slovakia, are an important example of Slovak cultural heritage. The Franciscan monastery was a famous site of religious significance due to the legends describing the apparitions of St Catherine. The preservation project of the monastery remains started in 1994. As a part of this project, complex historical, archaeological, anthropological and geophysical research has been conducted at the site since 1997. Microgravity and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys were carried out in the nave of the former church in order to reveal the position of three aristocratic crypts that served as burial places for the members or higher society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the microgravity data processing, a novel method for the calculation of the building correction was employed, where the gravitational effect of the church is calculated using a polyhedral model of the building created from photographs with a special photogrammetric software. Several gravity anomalies were found in the residual Bouguer anomaly map. Semi-automated interpretation techniques including the Euler deconvolution and harmonic inversion have been used to investigate the depth and size of anomalous sources. Results from 36 GPR profiles obtained by a 400 MHz antenna were visualized in the form of horizontal timeslices and vertical time-sections. These images indicate anomalous reflections suggesting potential archaeological targets. Integrated interpretation of results from both geophysical methods has confirmed the presence of a known aristocratic crypt excavated in 2001, as well as two other crypts predicted from historical archives. The combination of microgravity and GPR surveys has proved to be a very effective and non-destructive tool for archaeological research.

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Section: Geophysical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microgravity and Ground‐penetrating Radar Investigations of Subsurface Features at the St Catherine's Monastery, Slovakia

Pánisová

Fraštia

Wunderlich

et al. 2013

Archaeological Prospection

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“…Microgravity is recognized now as a powerful tool for analysis of geological inhomogeneties in subsurface (e.g., Butler, 1984;Thimus and Ruymbeke, 1988;Patterson et al, 1995;Crawford, 2000;Beres et al, 2001;Rybakov et al, 2001;Eppelbaum and Khesin, 2004;Styles et al, 2004Styles et al, , 2006da Silva and Ferreira, 2006;Branston and Styles, 2006;Debeglia et al, 2006;Ezersky et al, 2006;Abad et al, 2007;Blecha, 2007;Bradley et al, 2007;Mochales et al, 2007;Eppelbaum et al, 2008;Ezersky et al, 2008). The types of noise (disturbances) arising in the microgravity investigations are studied in detail in Debeglia and Dupont (2002).…”

Section: Microgravity: Advanced Methodology Of Karst Terrains Localizmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is known that 3-D modeling in microgravity is a powerful interpretation tool (e.g., Branston and Styles, 2006;Debeglia et al, 2006;Abad et al, 2007). 3-D gravity modeling over four models of sinkholes (with different size and depth of the sinkholes occurrence) is presented in Fig.…”

Section: Estimation Of Gravity Effects From Various Karst Cavity Volumentioning

confidence: 99%

Study of the factors affecting the karst volume assessment in the Dead Sea sinkhole problem using microgravity field analysis and 3-D modeling

et al. 2008

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Abstract. Thousands of sinkholes have appeared in the Dead Sea (DS) coastal area in Israel and Jordan during two last decades. The sinkhole development is recently associated with the buried evaporation karst at the depth of 25–50 m from earth's surface caused by the drop of the DS level at the rate of 0.8–1.0 m/yr. Drop in the Dead Sea level has changed hydrogeological conditions in the subsurface and caused surface to collapse. The pre-existing cavern was detected using microgravity mapping in the Nahal Hever South site where seven sinkholes of 1–2 m diameter had been opened. About 5000 gravity stations were observed in the area of 200×200 m2 by the use of Scintrex CG-3M AutoGrav gravimeter. Besides the conventional set of corrections applied in microgravity investigations, a correction for a strong gravity horizontal gradient (DS Transform Zone negative gravity anomaly influence) was inserted. As a result, residual gravity anomaly of –(0.08÷0.14) mGal was revealed. The gravity field analysis was supported by resistivity measurements. We applied the Emigma 7.8 gravity software to create the 3-D physical-geological models of the sinkholes development area. The modeling was confirmed by application of the GSFC program developed especially for 3-D combined gravity-magnetic modeling in complicated environments. Computed numerous gravity models verified an effective applicability of the microgravity technology for detection of karst cavities and estimation of their physical-geological parameters. A volume of the karst was approximately estimated as 35 000 m3. The visual analysis of large sinkhole clusters have been forming at the microgravity anomaly site, confirmed the results of microgravity mapping and 3-D modeling.

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“…Abad et al [23] carried out an assessment of a buried rainwater cistern in a Carthusian monastery (Valencia, Spain) by 2D microgravity modeling. Microgravity monitoring is one of the most widely used geophysical techniques for predicting volcanic activity; for instance, Carbone and Greco [38] described in detail their microgravity monitoring of Mt.…”

Section: A Brief Review Of Microgravity Investigations In Subsurface mentioning

confidence: 99%

Removing Regional Trends in Microgravity in Complex Environments: Testing on 3D Model and Field Investigations in the Eastern Dead Sea Coast (Jordan)

Al-Zoubi

Eppelbaum

Abueladas

et al. 2013

International Journal of Geophysics

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Microgravity investigations are now recognized as a powerful tool for subsurface imaging and especially for the localization of underground karsts. However numerous natural (geological), technical, and environmental factors interfere with microgravity survey processing and interpretation. One of natural factors that causes the most disturbance in complex geological environments is the influence of regional trends. In the Dead Sea coastal areas the influence of regional trends can exceed residual gravity effects by some tenfold. Many widely applied methods are unable to remove regional trends with sufficient accuracy. We tested number of transformation methods (including computing gravity field derivatives, self-adjusting and adaptive filtering, Fourier series, wavelet, and other procedures) on a 3D model (complicated by randomly distributed noise), and field investigations were carried out in Ghor Al-Haditha (the eastern side of the Dead Sea in Jordan). We show that the most effective methods for regional trend removal (at least for the theoretical and field cases here) are the bilinear saddle and local polynomial regressions. Application of these methods made it possible to detect the anomalous gravity effect from buried targets in the theoretical model and to extract the local gravity anomaly at the Ghor Al-Haditha site. The local anomaly was utilized for 3D gravity modeling to construct a physical-geological model (PGM).

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Non-destructive assessment of a buried rainwater cistern at the Carthusian Monastery ‘Vall de Crist’ (Spain, 14th century) derived by microgravimetric 2D modelling

Cited by 15 publications

References 6 publications

Microgravity and Ground‐penetrating Radar Investigations of Subsurface Features at the St Catherine's Monastery, Slovakia

Microgravity and Ground‐penetrating Radar Investigations of Subsurface Features at the St Catherine's Monastery, Slovakia

Study of the factors affecting the karst volume assessment in the Dead Sea sinkhole problem using microgravity field analysis and 3-D modeling

Removing Regional Trends in Microgravity in Complex Environments: Testing on 3D Model and Field Investigations in the Eastern Dead Sea Coast (Jordan)

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