Blog | Advanced Geosciences Inc

Induced polarization (IP) is the Earth’s capacity to hold an electric charge over time. IP measures the voltage decay curve after the injected current is shut off. The higher the IP, the longer over time the charge is held—IP decays over time, typically a few seconds but sometimes up to minutes, and will eventually disappear. IP is especially useful for mineral exploration applications. 

How does induced polarization surveying work?

IP surveying is an exploration method involving the measurement of the slow decay of voltage in the ground following the cessation of an...

Have you ever prepared for a vacation, only to arrive at your destination and realize you’d neglected to pack important attire and equipment for your holiday? Recently, in my haste to prepare for a trip, I didn’t make a list and found myself in this very situation—I ended up wearing wool sweaters and jeans in an 80-degree climate. 

While this may seem like a silly example—it was just a few days—not knowing what you need to bring to a survey site has much bigger ramifications. If you bring the wrong geophysical instruments and equipment for a survey, you may not get the best data, or...

In the 1980s and early 1990s, geophysicists became largely disenchanted with electrical resistivity because of the inadequacies of Vertical Electrical Sounding (VES). Specifically, the VES method assumes that the imaged geology is horizontally layered and that each layer is homogeneous. Of course, this often isn’t the case, causing some project managers (and their clients) to become fed up with the unusable results.

Around this time, we created the Sting R1—the industry’s first 2D electrical resistivity imaging instrument—and tested the instrument on what is now called ...

Soil resistivity testing is performed for a variety of important applications, including:

• Testing grounding grids: Grounding grids are primarily used in industrial settings—like electrical substations—where expensive machinery needs to be protected. The U.S. National Electric Code sets forth that every substation must have at least one grounding rod to protect equipment from lightning damage and to ensure that a stray current from the neutral doesn’t electrocute a person nearby.

• Cathodic protection: Cathodic protection is a way to protect underground or...