Development of a lightweight high resolution airborne geophysical system

Throughout the world, airborne geophysical surveys are used in exploration and regional mapping, In these applications, the ability to rapidly cover large areas of ground at reasonably good sampling intervals, make helicopter or aeroplane borne instruments extremely efficient and cost effective. Ground-based methods remain however the mainstay of environmental and engineering geophysics, where small high resolution surveys are the order of the day. Particularly in these fields and in small and medium scale groundwater exploration, we have identified a space, where larger survey size (up to about 1000 line kilometres) makes ground surveying extremely costly and time consuming while the mobilisation costs make airborne surveying prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, some areas have difficult access, owing to lack of infrastructure , rugged terrain and obstacles, such as landmines in .several African countries. For these reasons, the Council for Geoscience in South Africa set about developing an intermediate geophysical platform, to bridge the gap between ground and conventional airborne surveys.