GROUND PENETRATING RADAR SURVEY AT AN HISTORICAL SITE NEAR SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI

A ground penetrating radar survey was conducted west of Springfield, Missouri in Bois D’arc to locate an historic cistern. The historical site consists of a two-story house, sheds, septic systems and unknown number of buried metal and nonmetal pipes. The location of cistern is currently unknown, so a ground penetrating radar survey using a GSSI dual frequency (200 and 400 Mhz) system was conducted. Approximately 100, roughly north-south profiles were collected. The profiles ranged from 70 to 5 meters in length. Processing of the data included a topographic correction, dewowing, band-pass wavelength filtering, and averaging of the data. The preliminary results indicate that there are several diffractors that may make the edges of the cistern but the large number of diffractors make a preliminary identification of the cistern difficult. Additional, processing will be performed to aid in determining, if ground penetrating radar can locate the cistern.