Using ground penetrating radar in levee assessment to detect small scale animal burrows

Abstract Levees are civil engineering structures built to protect human lives, property, and agricultural lands during flood events. To keep these important structures in a safe condition, continuous monitoring must be performed regularly and thoroughly. Small rodent burrows are one of the major defects within levees; however, their early detection and repair helps in protecting levees during flooding events. A set of laboratory experiments was conducted to analyze the polarity change in GPR signals in the presence of subsurface voids and water-filled cavities. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) surveys using multi frequency antennas (400 MHz and 900 MHz) were conducted along an 875 meter section of the Lollie Levee near Conway, Arkansas, USA, to assess the levee's structural integrity. Many subsurface animal burrows, water-filled cavities, clay clasts, and metallic objects were investigated and identified. These anomalies were located at different depths and have different sizes. To ground truth the observations, hand dug trenches were excavated to confirm several anomalies. Results show an excellent match between GPR interpreted anomalies and the observed features. In-situ dielectric constant measurements were used to calculate the feature depths. The results of this research show that the 900 MHz antenna has more advantages over the 400 MHz antenna.