Karstic water exploration using the Schlumberger VES and dipole–dipole resistivity profiling surveys in the Tepal area, west of Shahrood, Iran

The need for clean groundwater resources to have sustainable development in a country is undoubted. Due to the importance and high quality of karstic waters in supplying water in Iran especially in Shahrood city, it is attempted in this research work to recognize and explore karstic waters in southwest of Tepal area, Shahrood. For this purpose, integration of the results obtained from the methods of vertical electrical sounding (VES) and resistivity profiling has been used in this research work. The VES surveys have been performed in 10 sounding points using the Schlumberger array with electrode separations of a maximum 500 meters. The resistivity profiling surveys using dipole-dipole electrode array with 75m electrode spacing and dipole steps 1 to 8 have been carried out along four lines having a length of more than four kilometers in the study area. Then, one-dimensional (1-D) modeling and interpretation of the sounding results using master curves and IX1D software, and two-dimensional (2-D) modeling and interpretation of the profiling results using Res2DINV have been made. As a result of the interpretation and integration of the results, karstic water zones in the study area have been recognized, and based on that, suitable locations for drilling to access and extract karstic groundwater have been introduced.