Monday, June 13, 2011

The Great Pateira Fault


Lake Pateira has at least one similarity with Loch Ness: its "great fault" (the Great Glenn fault in Loch Ness devides Scotland from England). We wanted to prove this with geophysics, measuring the resistivity of the sub surface until a depth of 60 meters. Different layers have different resistivities, when there is a discontinuity you can see this in the resistivities, at least this was the idea.

To measure the resistivity we had to roll out a cable of 400 mtr at the bottom of the lake from a small boat. The cable has 61 graphite electrodes and once unrolled at the bottom of the lake a dedicated computer measures the resistivity at different electrode combinations. This will result in more than 1000 data points which can be “transformed” to a 2D modelled resistivity picture of the sub surface. The result was clear evidence of an abrupt vertical change in the resistivity in the central part of the lake.

The next step will be to see if we can trace the fault back in other parts of the lake and we also might find evidence of a monster in the lake.....

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