Integrated application of geophysical methods industrial waste disposal areas: Franca City, Brazil

Abstract

An increasing interest by studies of the prospecting techniques of the environmental components when they are exposed to pollution activities is observed nowadays. Several environmental characteristics can be investigated by geophysical methods, main by the electrical and electromagnetic methods. This work shows some results get by geophysical surveys in the search of geoenvironmental information about the damage caused by industrial waste disposal. The resistivity, induced polarization and spontaneous potential methods, were carried out in industrial waste disposal area, in the Franca region, state of São Paulo. The results show in this paper confirms that the geophysical methods produce high quality information to assess areas affected by contaminants from waste disposal. Geological and geotechnical attributes of the land (groundwater level, groundwater flow, soil layer thickness) and detection and delimitation of the waste bodies and the interference with the surrounding media can be assessed using these methods. Combining the different geophysical methods is an effective way to get detailed information required in a geological geotechnical characterization program.