Rock Team

The Rock sub-team conducting fieldwork in Monkey Run (Varna) using the SuperSting resistivity meter and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) under Dr. Keranen’s guidance.

Rock Team

The rock team is responsible for measuring and monitoring the quality and stability of soil and earth minerals in our region. Microorganism biodiversity, erosion resistance, agricultural/vegetative productivity, and conservation of the water table highly depend on soil composition. The Rock Sub Team is currently responsible for developing a method to correlate ground truth measurements surrounding the Empire State Mine to satellite imagery derived from Google Earth Engine. In Google Earth Engine, the team aims to utilize open-sourced imagery from Landsat, Sentinel, and other satellite imagery to measure and map the vegetative index surrounding the Empire State Mine. Read more below!

Current Project

This Fall 2023, the CU GeoData Rock Sub-team is focusing on comparing satellite imaging of the Empire State Mine tailings, an underground zinc mine in upstate New York. Each member on the team will be working with different imaging techniques such as Sentinel 2, Landsat 8, and MODIS on Google Earth Engine and WorldView-3, and primarily looking into the levels of zinc around the area. The team will also review tailing samples from the mine and compare to see how variations in zinc affect vegetation and the surrounding environment.

Data Visualizations

  • Raw Monkey Run soil resistivity data before inversion displayed on ResiPy.

  • Image of inverted Monkey Run data on ResiPy, where discrepancies at electrodes 13 and 17 with significantly higher resistivity than the surrounding area were found.

  • Subsurface image of the cross section of the ground surveyed for soil resistivity using the GPR.

Breaking Ground

Rock team currently utilizes a range of state-of-the-art instruments to explore Ithaca’s subsurface. With GPR and resistivity sensors, Rock team works to find the avenues by which contaminants permeate the soil and enter the watershed.

  • Rock subteam member, Dora, hammering in one of 28 electrodes to set up equipment for collecting soil resistivity data in the Monkey Run area.

  • Rock subteam member, Rohan, connecting the electrodes to the main cable to complete the 28 electrode array.

  • The rock subteam conducting tests with the NPK sensor with different fruits to observe fluctuations in NPK levels.

  • The rock subteam collecting data with the NPK sensor on the Arts Quad. By testing instrumentation, the team aims to increase data collection accuracy.