GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 30, NO. 7, 1373, doi:10.

1029/2002GL016048, 2003

Evidence for correlation of electrical resistivity and seismic velocity in heterogeneous near-surface materials
Max A. Meju and Luis A. Gallardo1
Department of Environmental Science, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Adel K. Mohamed2
Department of Geology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK Received 4 August 2002; revised 24 October 2002; accepted 26 November 2002; published 4 April 2003.

[ 1 ] The electrical resistivity and seismic velocity distributions over a buried hillside have been obtained using non-invasive controlled experiments on coincident profiles and 2D image reconstructions. The optimal images are in structural agreement and allow the deduction of two opposite resistivity-velocity trends in the near-surface materials. For both trends, the resistivity (r) and p-wave velocity (Vp) are related in the form Log10 r = mLog10Vp + c with the respective constants m and c having different signs in I NDEX unconsolidated and consolidated materials.
TERMS: 5102 Physical Properties of Rocks: Acoustic properties; 5109 Physical Properties of Rocks: Magnetic and electrical properties; 5114 Physical Properties of Rocks: Permeability and porosity. Citation: Meju, M. A., L. A. Gallardo, and A. K. Mohamed, Evidence for correlation of electrical resistivity and seismic velocity in heterogeneous near-surface materials, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(7), 1373, doi:10.1029/2002GL016048, 2003.

1. Introduction and Problem Definition

[2] Electrical and seismic relationship in the subsurface [Faust, 1953] is a subject of on-going debate as correlation between anomalous electrical conductivities and low velocities are increasingly observed in non-invasive deep crustal studies [see e.g., Marquis and Hyndman, 1992 and references therein]. In much of the attempts to reconcile electrical and seismic observations in deep wells, the common thread is that resistivity and velocity are both functions of porosity [see e.g., Rudman et al., 1975] which is also the unifying assumption in non-invasive experiments currently focusing on correlating deep crustal data of variable quality from approximately coincident regional studies [e.g., Marquis and Hyndman, 1992]. There is a need to study heterogeneous near-surface materials for any such relationships especially as this may have implications for improved structural [cf. Eberhart-Phillips et al., 1995], petrophysical and environmental characterizations and for the development of algorithms for effective joint multidimensional interpretation of electrical and seismic field data. If porosity is also the connecting factor in the near-surface, it is logical to expect that additional insight may be gained from collocated studies of exposed fractured crystalline and
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porous sedimentary materials. Portable audiofrequency magnetotelluric (AMT), transient electromagnetic (TEM) and dc resistivity (herein collectively dubbed geoelectromagnetic or GEM) as well as seismic refraction methods can be adapted to near-surface studies. Also, the available sophisticated multi-dimensional inverse modelling schemes for interpreting traditional GEM and seismic field data [e.g., Mackie et al., 1997; Zelt and Barton, 1998] can be appropriately scaled to handle near-surface imaging problems. It is thus opportune to collect high quality, spatially dense measurements along the same survey lines and invert them to determine any resistivity-velocity relationships at shallow depths. [3] In this letter, we present the results of coincident GEM and seismic experiments to investigate near-surface resistivity-velocity relations at a selected area in Quorn in England (Figure 1). The Mountsorrel granodiorite (MG) forms the bedrock in Quorn and surrounding areas. This body was unroofed, deeply weathered and eroded (resulting in a highly irregular surface) during Permo-Triassic times and was subsequently overlain by the Mercian Mudstone (MM) deposits. Heterogeneous glacial drift deposits form a 1 3 m thick surficial blanket in the area. MG outcrops in the southern margin of the study site and is believed to descend northwards under sedimentary cover. It is heavily fractured at outcrop and presumably at depth (based on field observations at the largest hardrock quarry in western Europe located ca. 400 m south of

Also at CICESE, Mexico. Now at Dept. of Geology, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt.

Copyright 2003 by the American Geophysical Union. 0094-8276/03/2002GL016048$05.00

Figure 1. Location map showing the geophysical survey grid at Quorn in England. The lines run N-S and are 20 m apart.

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MEJU ET AL.: NEAR-SURFACE RESISTIVITY-VELOCITY CORRELATION

Figure 2. Example of TEM and bi-directional dc and AMT sounding curves from position 45S on line 20W. Shown are the north-south (xy) and east-west (yx) apparent resistivities. our survey grid). The Quorn site is thus an excellent natural laboratory for testing the applicability of the hypothesis of electrical-seismic relations in heterogeneous porous and fractured materials. The questions we seek to answer using a 2D data imaging approach are: (1) Are there any correlatable trends in the vertical and lateral distribution of resistivity and velocity within MG, MM and cover materials? (2) Do the near-surface resistivity-velocity trends follow those predicted [e.g., Marquis and Hyndman, 1992] for deep crustal systems and if not, what are the possible causes of the discrepancy? Figure 4. Optimal 2D velocity model for line 20W. The model is shown in the bottom diagram. The fit to the field recordings for different shot points (differentiated by symbols) is shown in the top plot. TEM profiling employed contiguous (20 m-sided) transmitter loops along six N-S survey lines (80E to 20W) shown in Figure 1 and served to pinpoint any spatial variability or significant fracture-zones in the bedrock and hence the best location for the collocated 2D GEM and seismic experiments. Areal maps of the TEM voltage responses for selected time-windows (not presented here) showed spatial variability with significant differences in amplitude between north and south of position 180S. [5] Line 20W was chosen for detailed 2D profiling experiments based on TEM information. Bi-directional Schlumberger dc soundings were made at selected positions

2. Field Experiments and Model Correlations

2.1. Collocated High-Resolution Profiling [4] TEM, dc resistivity, seismic refraction and AMT surveying, in that order, have been conducted at the Quorn site. The site is a relatively flat grazing ground and topographic heights were available from a previous differential GPS survey using the Magellan 5000 PRO system. The

Figure 3. 2D resistivity model for line 20W. Shown are the optimal model (top plot) and the fit of the model responses (ornamented solid line) to field data (round symbols) at six sounding locations (bottom plot).

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Figure 5. Optimal AMT resistivity model for line 20W. The 13 sounding positions (15m apart) are indicated at the top. (ca. 40 m apart) with N-S and E-W expanding electrode arrays (AB/2 of 1.5 to 90 m). Seismic travel-time data were recorded along the line using a multi-channel seismograph with a sledgehammer as energy source and a geophone spacing of 2 m. The source was used at both ends of the profile and at two intermediate points along the line to generate continuous forward and reverse profiles of potential refractors. Finally, AMT data were simultaneously recorded in two orthogonal directions in the frequency range 10 Hz to 100 KHz using a station spacing (and electric dipole lengths) of 15 m. Sample dc, TEM and AMT apparent resistivity (ra) data from station 45S on line 20W are presented in Figure 2 using a convenient commonscale [Meju, 2002, equations 1 and 2] in which AB/2 (or L in metres) is converted to the equivalent transient time (t in msec) using the relation t = (pm0L2)/2ra where ra is in
m and m0 = 4p 107 H/m; t is then converted to an equivalent MT frequency. Notice the agreement between the various ra sounding curves. The AMT data are relatively poor in quality. 2.2. Model Comparability: Resistivity-Velocity Relations [6] The inverse problem was to reconstruct the smoothest 2D distribution of the relevant physical parameters in the subsurface that explained the field observations to within a preset (1 rms) error. Only the in-line (N-S) measurements on line 20W have been inverted to yield 2D images required for the comparability analysis. The in-line AMT data were taken as the TM-mode responses, corrected for static shift

using TEM data (cf. Figure 2) [e.g., Sternberg et al., 1988], and the noisy sections smoothed before inversion. Popular, finite-difference based, conjugate gradient inversion schemes [Mackie et al., 1997; Zelt and Barton, 1998] were adapted to the task of imaging the Quorn AMT apparent resistivity and seismic travel-time data. A different 2D inversion algorithm [Perez-Flores et al., 2001] was used for imaging the dc resistivity data. [7] The optimal models from dc resistivity (Figure 3), seismic refraction (Figure 4) and AMT (Figure 5) imaging show similar subsurface structural features suggesting that there may be a geological basis for correlating these models. The configuration of the boundary between the bedrock and its cover materials can be discerned (approximated by the 100
m and 3000 m/s contours) in these models. [8] The dc and AMT resistivities are in good accord (Figures 3 and 5) and so either model can serve for correlation with seismic velocity. An interesting observation is that the resistivity (r in
m) and p-wave velocity (Vp in m/s) distributions (sampled at coincident grid positions or pixels in the 2D models) seem to be related in the form (see Figures 6a and 6b)
Log10 r mLog10 VP c 1

where the constants m and c respectively have values of 3.88 and 11 for the consolidated rocks (>3m deep) at this site (see trend B in Figure 6a). An inverse relation appears to hold for the unconsolidated soil/drift deposits (i.e., top 3 m) where m = 3.88 and c = 13 (see trend A in Figure 6a). Note that Rudman et al. [1975, equation 10] interrelated ra and velocity logs from 700 1300 m deep wells (see Figure 6b) using an equation derived assuming ra and Vp to be functions of porosity. If we further assume that the transit time of the elastic wave in the solid grains is very small compared to that in the pore fluid, their equation simplifies to Log10 ra = (mLog10Vp mLog10B) where m and B are empirical constants. This is identical to our experimentally determined relation for the consolidated rocks at Quorn and would suggest that porosity is also a connecting factor for resistivity and velocity in the near-surface. [9] The Quorn AMT-seismic relation is compared in Figure 6b with the predicted resistivity-velocity trend for

Figure 6. Relationships between logarithmic resistivity and velocity. Shown are: (a) Dc resistivity and (b) AMT resistivity versus seismic p-wave velocity on line 20W. The depth of sampling (in metres) is shown for selected points (pixels). Note the identified trends A and B of inverse slope in (a). Trend B was constrained to pass through well estimated points thus giving less emphasis to contributions (e.g. zone C in (a)) from unresolved deep features in our seismic model. In (b), trends D and E are taken respectively from Marquis and Hyndman [1992, Figure 4] and Rudman et al. [1975, Figure 7] for comparison.

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a deep well [Rudman et al., 1975, Figure 7] and a low porosity deep crustal system (aspect ratio of 0.01 and Archies law exponent of 1.2) [Marquis and Hyndman, 1992, Figure 4]. Notice that the various curves (representing different crustal depths) show the same basic trend. Further work is required to fully understand the significance of these relationships or trends. [10] Laboratory measurements on cores [Mazac et al., 1988] suggest that resistivity increases with decreasing saturated permeability in the aerated zone of heterogeneous soils over weathered granite. It is also known that Vp increases with degree of grain packing in unconsolidated materials while Vp increases as the natural logarithm of permeability in consolidated materials [Marion et al., 1992]. It is thus probable that fracture or saturated permeability decreases with depth in MM and MG with a corresponding rise in both resistivity and velocity. In the granular cover sediments (top 3m), saturated permeability would appear to increase (and hence r decreases) with depth. Accordingly, and because of probable air pockets in the shallower vadose zone, Vp appears to increase with depth in these cover sediments causing the observed reversed resistivity-velocity trend (A in Figure 6a).

improved resistivity-velocity correlations in near-surface studies. [12] Acknowledgments. The authors are grateful to Doug Groom for providing the STRATAGEM-EH4 system and Peter Fenning for providing the TEM field system used in this study. We thank Nasir Ahmed for making the seismic refraction data available and Colin Zelt and M. Perez-Flores for permission to use their inversion codes. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their very constructive comments.

References
Eberhart-Phillips, D., W. D. Stanley, B. D. Rodriguez, and W. J. Lutter, Surface seismic and electrical methods to detect fluids related to faulting, J. Geophys. Res., 97, 12,919 12,936, 1995. Faust, L. Y., A velocity function including lithologic variation, Geophysics, 18, 271 288, 1953. Mackie, R., S. Rieven, W. Rodi, User manual and software for two-dimensional inversion of magnetotelluric data, Earth Resources Lab., Mass. Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, 1997. Marion, D., A. Nur, H. Yin, and D. Han, Compressional velocity and porosity in sand-clay mixtures, Geophysics, 57, 554 563, 1992. Marquis, G., and R. D. Hyndman, Geophysical support for aqueous fluids in the deep crust: seismic and electrical relationships, Geophys. J. Int., 110, 91 105, 1992. Mazac, O., M. Cislerova, and T. Vogel, Application of geophysical methods in describing spatial variability of saturated hydraulic conductivity in the zone of aeration, J. Hydrology, 103, 117 126, 1988. Meju, M. A., Geoelectromagnetic exploration for natural resources: models, case studies and challenges, Surv. Geophys., 23, 133 205, 2002. Perez-Flores, M. A., S. Mendez-Delgado, and E. Gomez-Trevino, Imaging low-frequency and dc electromagnetic fields using a simple linear approximation, Geophysics, 66, 1067 1081, 2001. Rudman, A. J., J. F. Whaley, R. F. Blake, and M. E. Biggs, Transformation of resistivity to pseudovelocity logs, AAPG Bull., 59, 1151 1165, 1975. Sternberg, B. K., J. C. Washburne, and L. Pellerin, Correction for the static shift in magnetotellurics using transient electromagnetic soundings, Geophysics, 53, 1459 1468, 1988. Zelt, C. A., and P. J. Barton, Three-dimensional seismic refraction tomography: a comparison of two methods applied to data from the Faeroe Basin, J. Geophys. Res., 103, 7187 7210, 1998.

3. Conclusion
[11] Two-dimensional imaging of data from GEM and seismic profiling over porous sediments and fractured granodiorite at Quorn have yielded concordant images of the near-surface. Analysis of the 2D images suggests the presence of correlatable trends in the near-surface resistivity and velocity distributions at this site and is interpreted as lending support to the hypothesis that porosity or fracture permeability may be a key factor in understanding electrical-seismic relations in both consolidated and unconsolidated crustal materials. We suggest that joint 2D imaging of GEM and seismic profile data may be a useful strategy for

M. A. Meju and L. A. Gallardo, Department of Environmental Science, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YQ, United Kingdom. (m.meju@ Lancaster.ac.uk; l.gallardo@Lancaster.ac.uk) A. K. Mohamed, Department of Geology, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt.