Professors at Oklahoma State University describe setting up the school’s first geophysics degree program and conducting a field acquisition project for their new Environmental Geophysics course that included having the students collect low center frequency pulseEKKO GPR data over a suspected fault.
By Camelia C. Knapp, Ahmed Ismail, and James H. Knapp
In response to our evolving Geoscience discipline and the global energy transition, the Boone Pickens School of Geology (BPSoG) at Oklahoma State University (OSU) has recently diversified and expanded our undergraduate Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree options. Building on more than 70 years of a storied Geology B.S. program focused on petroleum geology, with such notable graduates as T. Boone Pickens, we have launched new B.S. degrees in Geophysics (2021) and Environmental Geoscience (2022), as well as concentrations in Environmental Geology, Pre-Law, Secondary Education Certification, and Petroleum Geology in our traditional Geology B.S. (2018).
Attendant to these new degree programs are new, hands-on, field-based courses, including Environmental Geophysics, for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Drs. Camelia Knapp and Ahmed Ismail co-teach this course, which includes instruction in ground penetrating radar (GPR), seismic refraction, Multichannel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW), electrical resistivity, spontaneous potential, gravity, and magnetics methods. The BPSoG built on a previous pulseEKKO 100 System by purchasing the pulseEKKO PRO system with 25, 50, 100, and 200 MHz center frequency antennae. Expanding the range of antennae frequency affords the ability to use the system for more geological, hydrological, and environmental applications.
In addition, we have incorporated student-based scientific inquiry into our new geophysics curriculum, drawing on local problems of subsurface geologic interest, and actively engaging students in undergraduate research. In the fall of 2022, 22 students enrolled in Environmental Geophysics, along with interested volunteers (Figure 1), participated in integrating these geophysical techniques for a class project.
The target of investigation was a 4 km long escarpment with about 15-20 meters of topographic variation along the Cimarron River drainage in southwestern Payne County, Oklahoma, provisionally called the Coyle Escarpment (Figure 2), which may represent an unrecognized fault. This location provided an intriguing scientific objective close to the OSU campus, accessible on public property along county roads.
The pulseEKKO PRO GPR system was used in conjunction with seismic refraction, MASW, and electrical resistivity methods to characterize the geometry of subsurface stratigraphy with respect to the surface topography. Seismic activity has been common in Payne County over the last decade, and W-E-striking faults were previously recognized in the region from subsurface studies. The goal for the students was to evaluate the origin of this topographic feature as either structural, erosional, or some combination thereof.
The GPR data acquisition consisted of two co-located 723 m profiles with 50 and 100 MHz center frequency antennae (Figure 3). These profiles were readily acquired by the students, and of the geophysical techniques used, provided the only graphic images of the geometry of subsurface stratigraphic boundaries across the escarpment.
Additionally, common mid-point (CMP) profiles were collected along the transect (Figure 4) with the 50 MHz antennae, used to determine the electromagnetic velocity to be ~0.116 m/ns.
As of this writing, analysis and interpretation of the data are ongoing, but students involved in the project clearly benefitted from the hands-on experience of addressing a real-world problem. We intend to integrate these geophysical techniques into a summer geophysical field course at our OSU field station in Cañon City, Colorado as the capstone experience for our geophysics majors.
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