During July, two surveys will take place in the INFACT reference sites.

The first survey will take place in Geyer, the German test site. The Helmholtz-Centre Postdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences will conduct a passive-seismic experiment during the second half of July. 400 seismometers will be deployed in Geyer and record noise signals from the environment such as traffic, ocean waves or smaller earthquakes over a period of two weeks. With the help of the detected signals, a tomographic image of the subsurface will be created.

The second survey will take place at the Spanish reference sites, in Andalusia. The company Dimap, specialised in airborne hyperspectral imaging will deploy the full range of remote sensing imaging sensors over Rio Tinto and Cobre Las Cruces starting on 27 July.

The use of test or reference sites by industry has been a common practice lately to trial technologies and choose the most suitable one for a given environment.

For setting up the INFACT reference sites, extensive work has been done compiling and integrating pre-existing geophysical and drill-hole information. In addition, state-of-the-art data has been collected, and innovative datasets have been acquired during the project lifetime. Preliminary results on the evaluation of low-frequency Airborne EM techniques to penetrate new depths in the Iberian Pyrite Belt for example, are extremely promising.

The reference sites in Finland, Germany and Spain constitute a platform to demonstrate the social, environmental and technical performance of exploration technologies and to provide the industry with a transparent track-record of technologies in a given context.

Share This