March 24, 2007
Geological survey studies groundwater levels
The missile-shaped probe...will be towed by a helicopter and is part of a United States Geological Survey (USGS) study.
The tube and helicopter are owned by Fugro Airborne Surveys, a Canadian company currently under contract to the USGS to gather information about buried sand and gravel aquifers in three areas of eastern Nebraska.
The tube, which contains equipment mapping geologic structures beneath the earth, is carried about 100 feet above ground level by a helicopter.
"The brake lights really come on when drivers see it,” said Robert Swanson, director of the USGS Nebraska Water Science Center in Lincoln.
The Fugro system has never been used in Nebraska but has been used worldwide to determine oil, gas and mineral deposits.
...anyone observing the helicopter should not be alarmed when they see it fly overhead or pass below the horizon, stated USGS officials.
The retrieved information, including a three-dimensional color-coded model of each surveyed area, will be presented to the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, which Swanson estimated paid about $300,000 for the project.
story | Fremont Tribune
~So the Fugro system has never previously been used to find water? If so certainly not because of technical problems--aquifers are not that different from gas or oil deposits. It must be the prohibitive cost of the survey. Water is not yet a commodity as valuable as gas or oil.
Posted by Stubbornson at March 24, 2007 03:03 PM