[ Envirowatchers ] [ Main Menu ]
17841
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: What's that low-flying plane with the bomb-shaped device doing?
|
Sean Simmonds stood in front of an airplane on the tarmac at Louisiana Regional Airport near Gonzales and turned its large propeller by hand several times, moments after the engine had just been shut off. Like wiping the Cessna 208B's brow past the finish line of a long, focused run over rugged terrain, Simmonds said he was cooling the engine down at the day's end. Simmonds, a flight mechanic, and the rest of his crew with a U.S. Geological Survey contractor had spent much of a recent Friday flying the Cessna and towing a special, bomb-shaped sensor over the Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette areas to "see" deep into the ground. The crew with Xcalibur Multiphysics has been conducting aerial surveys of underground water resources important for agriculture in Louisiana. The USGS wants to better understand their geology, how the aquifers are being used and the impact of saltwater intrusion, agency scientists said. The flights, which made it to south Louisiana in early November, are part of larger USGS studies underway since 2017 to analyze the Mississippi River Alluvial Plain aquifer, important areas on that shallow aquifer's fringes, and the Chicot Aquifer in southwest Louisiana. Can't see the video below? Click here. "It's all about understanding groundwater resources and, to some extent, groundwater quality, where as you go south, we see more saline water," said Burke Minsley, a USGS research geophysicist based in Denver, Colorado. The aerial survey work in Louisiana, which is expected to be finished as early as mid-December, has stretched across parts of seven states from southern Missouri and Illinois to Lake Charles and the mouth of Mississippi River. The flights don't include the drinking water source for Baton Rouge, the Southern Hills aquifer, which has its own saltwater intrusion problems. Once finished, the Xcalibur plane and other USGS contractors' planes or helicopters will have surveyed a combined 100,000 square miles of territory, an area slightly bigger than the entire state of Oregon. It will have flown a straight-line distance of 50,000 miles, equivalent to a little more than two trips around planet, USGS scientists said. 112121 USGS aquifer flights map The plane, which is ringed by a thick wire, sends signals into the ground and an electromagnetic sensor called a "receiver bird" towed behind the plane picks up signals the subsurface reflects back, measuring the earth's electrical conductivity. From those returned signals, USGS scientists say they can help tell what the aquifer's geology is up to 1,000 feet deep, where the water might be and whether it may have higher salinity levels. The information will help fill in the gap in the geological understanding -- what the USGS calls "connecting the dots" -- of what lies in-between the thousands of water, petroleum or other wells drilled across the region through the years. The aerial surveying is hardly a monotonous ride on cruise control. The crew is flying an east-west and sometimes north- south grid across the landscape. Staying on track requires a four-person crew in the tight confines of the Cessna -- a pilot, a co-pilot, the mechanic, Simmonds, and a fourth person to manage the data collection and the towed sensor. |
Responses:
[17842]
17842
From: JTRIV, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: What's that low-flying plane with the bomb-shaped device doing?
URL: http://www.hiddenhydrology.org/projects/other/mississippi-river-change/
|
Hi chatillion, Interesting, thanks for sharing. That reminds me of a website I found that shows the changing path of the Mississippi river over the past few thousand years. See image above and link. There is also this link which shows the meandering of the Mississippi in more detail. http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?fisk Cheers Jim |
Responses:
None
[ Envirowatchers ] [ Main Menu ]