QUESTIONS RELATING TO THE QUALITY ASSURANCE AND QUALITY CONTROL OF ELECTRICAL RESISTIVITY METHODS

Electrical resistivity imaging (ERI) consists of injecting current into the ground via a pair of electrodes and measuring the resulting potential via a separate pair of electrodes and can be utilized to differentiate anthropogenic sources from natural electrical properties of the Earth (USEPA, 2023). The method is employed by researchers and industry professionals but ambiguous definitions of interference lead to the use of general guidelines for improving quality rather than citing standards. Because of this, metadata important for interpretation may be missed or not collected, data quality may instead suffer, and ultimately the reputability of the technology suffers as well. This will be a general discussion of best management practices (BMPs) and quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) protocols and lingering questions.