GROUND PENETRATING RADAR (GPR): SEEKING FOR SINKHOLES AT SANTEE STATE PARK, SANTEE, SOUTH CAROLINA

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) provides high-resolution data and has many advantages including mobility, rapid acquisition, cost effectiveness, near real-time interpretation, and lack of invasiveness, allowing detailed shallow subsurface characterization. The Santee State Park is overlain by Coastal Plain limestone, and Fox Squirrel Drive, one of the major routes, within Santee State Park, South Carolina, which serves as a dam for an adjacent small pond, has been developing sinkholes which have continuously threatened road safety in the park in the recent years. GPR common-offset transects, using 50 and 100 MHz frequency antennas, were collected along this road in order to determine the spatial extent of the sinkholes. The Geophysical Society at the University of South Carolina (GSUSC) presents the depths, sizes and possible inter-connection of sinkholes at the Santee State Park based on our preliminary results of processing and interpreting GRP data. Furthermore, we discuss possible causes of these sinkholes (e.g. is it a local active karst developed along remanent faults related to Charleston earthquake of 1886?), and possible implications of these geological hazards in the park and surrounding area.