Abstract
Developing reliable methods to estimate the uncertainties in the geophysical properties of materials has wide applications across the field of geophysics. Uncertainty estimates aid in helping to devise geophysical sampling schemes, applying inversion techniques to geophysical data and to assess how operator expertise, instrumentation or other factors influence survey accuracy. In this study we evaluate closely spaced geophysical data collected from magnetic, conductivity and gravity surveys over a range of soils deposited in the river valley of the Rio Grande. Our results indicate strong relations between agricultural soil classification and geophysical property variability. They also suggest that power-law processes are of limited usefulness in explaining variability. In addition we found no useful bivariate correlations that would allow us to use a rapid, dense measurement as a proxy for more difficult surveys.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
B.N. Arunshankar, Use of earth resistivity method for monitoring saline groundwater movement in aquifers. Thesis, University of Texas at El Paso (1993)
G. Chen, Q. Cheng, H. Zhang, Matched filtering method for separating magnetic anomaly using fractal model. Comput. Geosci. 90, 179–188 (2016)
A. Clauset, C.R. Shalizi, M.E.J. Newman, Power-law distributions in empirical data. SIAM Rev. 51(4), 661–703 (2009)
D.I. Doser, M.R. Baker, B.E. Eslick et al., The noise/data conundrum in gravity and magnetic surveys of fluvial sediments, near the Rio Grande, west Texas, in Abstract of the Fall Meeting, American Geophysical Union, Abstract IN51C-1168 (2008)
D. Doser, M. Baker, R. Langford et al., Agricultural soil maps as a framework for conducting shallow subsurface investigations in the Rio Grande valley near El Paso, in Proceedings, Symposium on the Application of Geophysics to Engineering and Environmental Problems (SAGEEP), Denver, CO (2007), pp. 582–589
M.E. Gettings, Multifractal model of magnetic susceptibility distributions in some igneous rocks. Nonlinear Proc. Geophys. 19, 635–642 (2012)
P. Michaelsen, R.A. Henderson, P.J. Crosdale et al., Facies architecture and depositional dynamics of the Upper Permian Rangal coal measures Bowen Basin, Australia. J. Sediment Res. 70(4), 879–895 (2000)
Natural Resources Conservation Service, Web Soil Survey (2016), https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/WebSoilSurvey.aspx. Accessed 17 June 2017
M. Pilkington, J.P. Todoeschuck, Fractal magnetization of continental crust. Geophys. Res. Lett. 20, 627–630 (1993)
A. Salem et al., Depth to Curie temperature across the central Red Sea from magnetic data using the de-fractal method. Tectonophysics 624, 75–86 (2014)
B. Sellepack, The stratigraphy of the Pliocene-Pleistocene Santa Fe Group in the southern Mesilla Basin. Thesis, University of Texas at El Paso (2003)
D.L. Turcotte, Fractals and Chaos in Geology and Geophysics (Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Acknowledgements
A. Woody, B. Eslick, J. Olgin and A. Wamalwa assisted in the collection of gravity data for this study. The fall 2008 semester “Exploration Geophysics—Non-seismic Methods” class assisted in collection of the conductivity and magnetics data for the well field. C. Montana collected the magnetics data for the alfalfa field. We thank V. Kreinovich for the many fruitful conversations he has had with us regarding estimating uncertainties in geophysical data sets and meaningful ways to analyze the data.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Doser, D.I., Baker, M.R. (2020). Characterizing Uncertainties in the Geophysical Properties of Soils in the El Paso, Texas Region. In: Kosheleva, O., Shary, S., Xiang, G., Zapatrin, R. (eds) Beyond Traditional Probabilistic Data Processing Techniques: Interval, Fuzzy etc. Methods and Their Applications. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 835. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31041-7_25
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31041-7_25
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31040-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31041-7
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)