GPR Suitablilty

Is your site suitable for Ground Penetrating Radar?

The ability to image the subsurface of the earth with the resolution offered by  ground penetrating radar (GPR)  is enticing and desirable in many instances.

The reality is that GPR imaging quality  is suspectible to a lot of varying site conditions, most notably, soil type.  The more conductive the soil, the less penetration GPR may achieve.  Clays and silts, as conductive material  have a deleterious effect and may seriously restrict the imaging depth of GPR (see this example).  To that end, before we head out into the field with our instruments, we normally quiz the client on expected soil types.  Or we make use of data published by agencies, such at the Surficial Sands and Gravels mapped published by the Alberta government seen below. 

It gets cooler than this though, as you may drag & drop a kml, kmz or shapefile outlining your area of interest (AOI) and see if your AOI resides in the green (sand) or better yet, green with cobbles (sand and gravel).