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Near Surface Geoscience 2015 - 21st European Meeting of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics

DOI: 10.3997/2214-4609.201413690

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Integrated geophysical investigations for Calcione dam safety evaluation

Proceedings article published in 2014 by V. Giampaolo, L. Capozzoli, A. Caputi, C. Corradini, T. Moramarco, G. Zucco, E. Rizzo
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Postprint: policy unknown
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Abstract

An integrated geophysical field investigations have been carried out at the Calcione earthen dam near Lucignano town (Arezzo, Italy), for the purpose of better understanding the hydrogeological conditions at the site. Recently, the Calcione dam embankment has been affected by some landslides and a gabions drainage system was installed to mitigate the phenomena. Therefore, the purpose of the geophysical investigation has been to identify the presence of eventually seepage areas through the embankment materials and provide information about subsurface water circulation. These tasks have been accomplished through the use of self-potentials (SP), electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and ground penetrating radar (GPR), which have been commonly used in dam safety evaluation (Titov et al., 2000; Minsley et al., 2011; Ikard et al., 2014). In particular, SP is a passive geoelectrical method that is sensitive to subsurface groundwater flow, whereas electrical resistivity and GPR measurements can provide information about changes in subsurface lithology and groundwater saturation. At the site one self-potential map, 4 electrical resistivity tomographies, and an extensive grid of GPR profiles were collected on the dam embankment. In particular, 210 electric potential values were acquired, with 5 m spacing, along 9 longitudinal profiles to the dam embankment. All profiles are 5 m equally spaced, except L6 that was acquired at a distance of 4.5 m from L5 due to the gabions presence. SP measures were realized maintaining a fixed electrode as a reference base and moving the other electrode in each measurement station (fixed-base configuration). The reference electrode was positioned outside of the dam body, on the orographic left. A topographic correction was also applied, taking into account altitude variations between the different measurement points. The SP map was obtained by interpolating the data with the software Surfer8 (Golden Software, Inc.). Analysing the results, it can be observed that SP values are generally low and range between-26 and +16 mV, in particular, the positive areas apparently coincide with the areas characterized by higher humidity (marked by a different vegetation). Moreover, the positive anomaly circled in red seems to be localized in correspondence of the landslide that had previously involved the dam embankment. Resistivity measurements were acquired with a SYSCAL Junior resistivity meter (IRIS Instruments) using a wenner-schlumberger array with 48 electrode with 5 m spacing for profiles L2 and L3, parallel to the dam crest, and 3 m spacing for profiles L1(parallel to the dam crest) and L4 (perpendicular to the crest). All parallel ERTs show a shallow relative more resistive layer (resistivity in the range between 50 to 100 m) just below the ground surface, interpreted as the vadose zone, a very conductive central area (lower than 30 m) corresponding to the saturated dam body, and a deeper resistivity zone (higher than 100 m) coincident with the bedrock (fig.1). Finally, the dam toe is characterized by higher resistivity values therefore it is possible to exclude any seepage phenomena in this area. With ground penetrating radar technique, several profiles were acquired with the SIR-3000 system (GSSI-Instruments) coupled to 400 and 40 MHz antennas to investigate the dam structure at different depth and resolution. The raw radargrams acquired are processed with Reflex-w software (Sandmeier, 2003) to suppress ringing and random noise and apply gain function to enhance resolution of potential electromagnetic anomalies. With 40 MHz antenna, 311 NUOVE TECNICHE DI MISURA AL SUOLO E DA SATELLITE PER LA COMPRENSIONE E PREVISIONE DEI PROCESSI IDROLOGICI