Institute for Geophysics

The purpose of the study described in this report was to determine if conventional oil exploration-type COP seismic reflection survey techniques could be economically adapted to provide shallow geologic structural in-formation in the upper few hundred feet with resolution adequate for engineering evaluation applications. The area selected for the COP survey was an area near Fort Hancock, Hudspeth County, Texas which has recently been proposed as a possible low-level radioactive waste disposal site study area (Figure l). Although this report does not directly address the ques-tion of cost effectiveness of seismic reflection methods as compared to test well drilling, we employed the least expensive and most widely avail-able oil exploration seismic method, VIBROSEIS. This was done in order to obtain the lowest cost likely to be encountered for seismic survey studies. Clearly, far more expensive seismic techniques such as buried explosive sound sources and buried geophone receiver methods could have been employed to obtain much higher resolution data.