Journal of Geodynamics 41 (2006) 288295

Hydrological effects on the superconducting gravimeter

observation in Bandung
Maiko Abe a, , Shuzo Takemoto a , Yoichi Fukuda a , Toshihiro Higashi a ,
Yuichi Imanishi b , Sachiko Iwano a , Shihori Ogasawara a ,
Yuki Kobayashi a , Sjafra Dwipa c , Dendi Surya Kusuma c
a Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
b Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 164-8639, Japan
c Geothermal Division, Directorate of Mineral Resources Inventory, Bandung, Indonesia

Accepted 30 August 2005

Abstract
Gravity observation using the superconducting gravimeter (SG: GWR TT-70#008) in Bandung has been carried out since Decem-
ber 1997. The SG station in Bandung (BA) is the only station existing near the equator in the Global Geodynamics Project (GGP)
Network and belongs to a tropical climatic zone. In the rainy season, there are heavy rainfalls of over 30 mm/h by the passage of a
squall line. In order to estimate the peculiar hydrological effects of the gravity observation to the tropics, we installed a groundwater
level meter in January 2000, and soil moisture meters and the rain gauge in November 2002. We investigated the gravity variation
for the short period before and after each heavy rainfall. As a result of the comparison between gravity residuals and the rain gauge
data, a heavy rainfall caused gravity changes in the order of 1 Gal. The model of soil moisture can explain about 80% of the
variations in gravity.
2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: Superconducting gravimeter; Soil moisture variation; Hydrological effects; Groundwater level

1. Introduction

Since December 1997, gravity observation using the superconducting gravimeter (SG TT-70#008) has been contin-
ued in the Volcanological Survey of Indonesia (VSI), Bandung (Takemoto et al., 1998). The SG station in Bandung is
the only station of the Global Geodynamic Project (GGP) Network stations that is located near the equator. So far, the
long-term gravity change associated with the groundwater variation was reported (Takemoto et al., 2002). In order to
calibrate the SG, absolute gravity (AG) measurement by employing the FG-5 was conducted from 15 to 20 November
in 2002 and the scale factor of the SG was determined. The obtained scale factor was 52.22 0.09 Gal/V (Fukuda
et al., 2004).
One of the purposes of the SG observations is to detect small gravity signals caused by mass changes in the Earths
deep interior (Crossley, 1999). In order to detect such very small signals, the effect of groundwater variation and/or

Corresponding author. Fax: +81 75 753 3916.

E-mail address: abe@kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp (M. Abe).

0264-3707/$ see front matter 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.jog.2005.08.030
 M. Abe et al. / Journal of Geodynamics 41 (2006) 288295 289

soil moisture variation should be estimated correctly. In this respect, there are many detailed investigations at SG
observation sites (e.g. Harnisch and Harnisch, 2002). In the Geodynamic Observatory Moxa, as the amount of water
around the observatory area increases, the decrease of gravity was detected (Kroner, 2001). We report in this paper
the influence of rainfalls and soil moisture variations on the SG data in Bandung. Especially, we paid attention to the
short-term (less than 1 day) gravity changes.

2. Gravity variation in Bandung

2.1. The SG observation in Bandung

The Bandung station is located at 6.896 S, 107.632 E, 713 m above the sea level (Fig. 1). The observation
room was constructed 2.7 m below the ground surface. The geological feature around the observation site is char-
acterized by the soil composed of the volcanic deposit of sand and other volcanic products (Takemoto et al.,
1998).
As mentioned previously, the Bandung Station is located in a tropical climatic zone and suffers from heavy rainfalls
in the rainy season. Therefore, the SG recordings are disturbed by hydrological variations caused by heavy rainfalls.
In order to estimate the hydrological effects, we installed a groundwater level meter in a well in the VSI campus about
100 m distant from the SG station in January 2000. A rain gauge meter and soil moisture meters were also installed
near the SG observation site in November 2002 (Fig. 1).
The annual amount of a rainfall around the Bandung station reaches about 2000 mm or more. The dry season is
from May to October and the rainy season is from November to April. For example, while the total amount of a rainfall
in June 2003 was 12 mm, that in December 2002 reached to 439 mm.
The previous research (Takemoto et al., 2002) reported that there existed the time lag between groundwater variations
and gravity changes. In this study, we investigated the relation between precipitation and gravity change. In the case
that the amount of a rainfall is 20 mm or more during 1 h, we defined it as a localized heavy rain. We picked out the
rain gauge data suitable for this condition. During the period from 20 November 2002 to 15 June 2004, there were 47
events of heavy rainfall over 20 mm/h.

2.2. Analysis of the SG data

The raw SG data, recorded every 1 s, are pre-screened in order to remove spikes. Gaps were interpolated by the
theoretical value of earth tides. We decimated using low-pass filter to 1 h for the tidal analyses and determined the earth
tide parameters by means of the BAYTAP-G (Tamura et al., 1991) program.
We used these parameters in order to remove the short-period earth tides. For eliminating the long-period earth
tides (in the period range longer than 1 day), the theoretical values of solid earth were used. The atmospheric pressure
coefficient was determined by the multilinear least square fitting implemented in Tsoft (Van Camp, 2002) and the
pressure effects were removed. We eliminated these influence from the SG original data (86,400) with the Tsoft
software package.
Consequently, we picked out and analyzed 32 significant gravity variations among 47 examples mentioned above.

2.3. Results of the short-term gravity residual

Fig. 2(a and b), respectively, shows examples of short-term gravity variations after removing the earth tides and
the atmospheric effects from the SG data. In Fig. 2(a), we found that the gravity residuals decreased after a localized
heavy rain. This decrease of the gravity residual is caused by the attraction of soil moisture above the SG because it
lies in the underground. For the purpose of the comparison, we also showed (Fig. 2(b)) an example of the day without
rainfall.
In 4 cases among the 32 examples, the gravity decreases were not observed. We checked the output of tilt bal-
ance signals and found them to be in irregular state in these four cases. The tilt compensation system did not work
well in these four cases. So we considered that it had larger influence on the gravity residuals than soil moisture
effect.
In the next section, we estimated the gravitational attraction of soil moisture.
290 M. Abe et al. / Journal of Geodynamics 41 (2006) 288295

Fig. 1. Location of the VSI in Bandung (top) and positions of the SG, groundwater meter, soil moisture meters and the rain gauge meter
(bottom).

3. Estimation of soil moisture attraction

At first, we approximated the practical geographical structures of the site (Fig. 3(a)) to disks (Fig. 3(b)) so that we
could calculate easily. In this approximation, the length in the direction of Y-axis (in a direction cross at right angles
to a ground surface) fits the length of the practical topography. We took account of the space of the observation room
and between the floor and SG sensor.
We calculated the profile of soil moisture (the depth from 10 cm to 270 cm with the interval of 10 cm), the values
of which at the depth of 30 cm agree with the observed values. In order to calculate soil moisture profile, we used the
 M. Abe et al. / Journal of Geodynamics 41 (2006) 288295 291

Fig. 2. The gravity residuals caused by heavy rainfalls: (a) 13 December 2003; the total amount of the rainfall was 37 mm/day (boxes) and (b) 7
August 2003 (no rainfall).

bi-modal moisture retention function (including the van Genuchtens moisture retention curves (van Genuchten, 1980)
(Eq. (1)):

s(sat r ) (1 s)(sat r )
= n1 m1 + + r (1)
[1 + (1 0 ) ] [1 + (2 0 )n2 ]m2
292 M. Abe et al. / Journal of Geodynamics 41 (2006) 288295

Fig. 3. (a) The practical topography and (b) geometry of the model for calculation of hydrological effects on gravity.

In the above equation, indicates soil moisture content, sat and r are the saturated and residual values of the soil-water
content. m = 1 1/n, is pressure head (cm) and s, 1 , n1 , 2 and n2 are constants.
We used the Mualemvan Genucheten formula (2) as unsaturated hydraulic conductivity:

  
1  
r aK r bK bK 2
K = Ksat 1 1 (2)
sat r sat r
where K is the constant of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity (cm/h), and aK , bK are constants.
We calculated these values every 1 h by means of WASH 1D program (Fujimaki and Inoue, 2000) because
we recorded the value of soil moisture at every hour. When calculating, we used the observed rainfall data as
the input value. Fig. 4 shows the estimated value of soil moisture (thin line) and observed values (thick line)
at the depth of 30 cm (3 March, 2004). And the correlation coefficient between them is 0.9981. We concluded
that this estimation was done well. Next we calculated the attraction of these disks by the following Eq. (3)
(Fig. 3(b)):
 
A = 2G[b + R2 + (c b)2 R2 + c2 ] (3)

where G is Newtons gravitational constant (G: 6.67 1011 Nm2 /kg2 ), the density of water, b the thickness of disks,
R the radius of disks and c is the distance from a point of reference.
Finally, we estimated the attraction of the estimated soil moisture from the ground surface to the depth of 270 cm
using the profile of soil moisture content.

4. Comparison of the gravity residual with the attraction of soil moisture

We compared the gravity residuals with the estimated attraction of soil moisture. Fig. 5(a) showed an example
for rain between 24,000 s and 54,000 s on day 3 March 2004. This result indicated 3 March 2004. In this fig-
ure, the gravity residual (thick line) starts decreasing at the same time as that of the beginning of rainfall. The
amount of the rainfall was 64 mm/day and the corresponding decreases in gravity were about 0.6 Gal. The cal-
culated value as the effect of soil moisture (thin line), which was integrated from 10 cm to 270 cm, is similar to
that of the gravity residual. At 12 Oclock, the variation of soil moisture reached the constant value. Because the
 M. Abe et al. / Journal of Geodynamics 41 (2006) 288295 293

Fig. 4. (a) The estimated the value of soil moisture (thin line) and the observed values (thick line) at the depth of 30 cm (3 March 2004). The
correlation coefficient is 0.9981. (b) The estimated values of soil moisture at the depth of 30 cm, 60 cm and 90 cm.

geological features above the SG differ from that under it and there is no variation of soil moisture deeper than
110 cm within 24 h from the beginning of rainfall, we calculated only the gravitational attraction of soil moisture
above it.
Fig. 5(b) showed an example of the day with a concentrated rainfall. We had a rainfall of 40 mm/h in this day. The
effect of this heavy rainfall caused the decrease of the gravity residual (0.5 Gal). The effect of soil moisture reached
the constant value in 2 h from the beginning of rainfall. Fig. 5(a and b) showed that about 80% of the gravity decrease
was caused by the gravitational attraction of soil moisture.
294 M. Abe et al. / Journal of Geodynamics 41 (2006) 288295

Fig. 5. Comparison of the gravity residuals with the attraction of soil moisture: (a) 3 March 2004 and (b) 16 March 2004. The gravity residual (thick
line), the attraction of soil moisture (thin line) and the amount of the rainfall (boxes).

5. Concluding remarks

The apparent gravity decreases, which correspond to short-term gravity changes derived from heavy rainfalls, were
observed. We found that the gravity change of 0.4 Gal was caused by the gravitational attraction of soil moisture
above the gravimeter. This means that the effect of soil moisture corresponds to 80% of the decrease of the gravity
residual. In this study, we only took account of the effect above the SG. We can ignore the effects of soil moisture under
 M. Abe et al. / Journal of Geodynamics 41 (2006) 288295 295

it in considering that within 1 day. But we need to calculate the effect of soil moisture under the SG on the gravity
residuals for a longer period.
The time lag existed in the relation between residual gravity and groundwater level (Takemoto et al., 2002). As
the reason, we thought that the attraction of soil moisture and that of groundwater have the opposite signs. From the
beginning of rainfall to the arrival of the moisture at the surface of groundwater, the gravity decreases due to the
gravitational attraction.
We determined the constant parameter of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity when we calculated the effect of soil
moisture. The other way around, the precise gravity observations by SG will be helpful for the study in the hydrology.
Finally we again realized that the SG is a powerful tool with the sensitivity of nano-Gal in that the gravity decrease
caused by soil moisture variation is nano-Gal level.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the staff of the Geothermal Division, Directorate of Mineral Resources Inventory, Bandung,
Indonesia, for the maintenance of the gravimeter. In order to analyze the SG data, we used BAYTAP-G (Tamura et al.,
1991) and T-soft (Van Camp, 2002). For the estimation of soil moisture profile, we employed the WASH 1D program
(Fujimaki and Inoue, 2000). This work was partially supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Nos. 14,253,004 and 14,340,132).

References

Crossley, D., Hinderer, J., Casula, G., Francis, O., Hsu, H.T., Imanishi, Y., Jentzsche, G., Kaarianen, J., Merriam, J., Meurers, B., Neumeyer, J.,
Richter, B., Shibuya, K., Sato, T., van Dam, T., 1999. Network of superconducting gravimeters benefits a number of disciplines. Eos. Trans.
AGU 80 (11) 121, 125126.
Fujimaki, H., Inoue, M., 2000. The solute software WASH 1D for estimating the movement of water, heat and a solute in soil. In: Proceedings of
the Symposium on Japanese Society of Soil Physics, vol. 43, pp. 4849 (in Japanese).
Fukuda, Y., Higashi, T., Takemoto, S., Abe, M., Dwipa, S., Kusuma, D.S., Andan, A., Doi, K., Imanishi, Y., Arduino, G., 2004. The first absolute
gravity measurements in Indonesia. J. Geodyn. 38, 489501.
Harnisch, M., Harnisch, G., 2002. Seasonal variations of hydrological influences on gravity measurements at Wettzell. Bull. Inf. Marees Terrestres
(BIM) 137, 1084910861.
Kroner, C., 2001. Hydrological effects on gravity at the Geodynamic observatory Moxa. J. Geod. Soc. Jpn. 47, 353358.
Takemoto, S., Dwipa, S., Fukuda, Y., Higashi, T., Andan, A., Kusuma, D.S., Sukhyar, R., Tjetjep, W.S., Tanaka, T., Heliani, L.S., 1998. Precise
gravity observation in Bandung using a superconducting gravimeter. In: Proceedings of the Symposium on JapanIndonesia IDNDR Project,
Bandung, Indonesia, September 2123, 1998, pp. 223230.
Takemoto, S., Fukuda, Y., Higashi, T., Ogasawara, S., Abe, M., Dwipa, S., Kusuma, D.S., Andan, A., 2002. Effect of groundwater changes on SG
observations in Kyoto and Bandung. Bull. Inf. Marees Terrestres (BIM) 136, 1083910848.
Tamura, Y., Sato, T., Ooe, M., Ishiguro, M., 1991. A procedure for tidal analysis with a Bayesian information criterion. Geophys. J. Int. 104, 507516.
Van Camp, M., 2002. http://www.orb.be/SEISMO/TSOFT/tsoft.html.
Van Genuchten, M.T., 1980. A closed-form equation for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 44, 892898.