EDUCATIONAL AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE USING GEOPROBE 6620DT TO CONDUCT SHALLOW SEDIMENT ASSESSMENT AT A RESEARCH UNIVERSITY

The purpose of this presentation is to share our experience of owning, operating, and maintaining a Geoprobe 6620DT drill rig. Drilling is expensive and requires specialized skills not available in academic departments so the drilling is usually contracted. Contracted services are hard to schedule and fund. Therefore in the summer 2016 the Baylor Geosciences purchased a Geoprobe with the goal to improve research capabilities and educational opportunities for faculty, staff and students. The Geoprobe provides first-hand educational and research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to obtain subsurface sediment cores. These cores are used by graduate students in their research efforts, and by faculty for research and instructional purposes. The drill operations and how the cores are obtained provides additional research understanding. By owning, operating and interpreting core data, the researcher can make quick judgements as to where to place the next borings horizontally and vertically. The pluses of Geoprobe ownership include, 1) flexible access to equipment with student and faculty involvement, 2) shared learning between students-faculty to improve operational effectiveness, 3) economical sediment core acquisition for research and, 4) practical experience with equipment applicable to geologic practice. The negatives to owning and operating a Geoprobe include, 1) safety risks during transport and operation, 2) time necessary to train students, staff, and faculty, 3) coordinating equipment availability among multiple researchers and, 4) the mechanical experience needed to operate and maintain equipment. The Geoprobe has been used to obtain cores from alluvium and dune deposits. Planned work involves vertical dissolved organic carbon delineation to determine alluvium sequestration potential. Training consists of safety and operational training. The safety reviews consisted of Geoprobe manual of safe operations, drilling hazard analysis and contacting dig test prior to field work. The operations training is several hours of hands-on rig operations in the field under the supervision of an experienced operator. For the first year, we have three faculty, four graduate students, and fourteen undergraduates trained in safety and operational practices.