Using Laboratory Measurements of Electrical and Mechanical Properties to Assist Interpretation of Field Data from Shallow Geophysical Measurements

Reconstruction of shallow subsurface structure from geophysical data is a central problem for many environmental and engineering applications. We observe that for shallow soil distributions, seismic data alone or electrical data alone may provide a good reconstruction of the subsurface. We show that using joint seismic and electrical data will improve the reconstruction of shallow structure. Our results emphasize that the availability of techniques for making laboratory measurements of ultrasonic velocities at low pressures in unconsolidated materials and the ability to measure complex impedance in similar samples are key elements of this approach.