The temporal evolution of soil water content in an unsaturated slope
This Master's project was designed for Emma Brennvall Lorentzen who started her Master's program in Earth Sciences, UiB, in the fall semester 2023. The Master's project is given by the research group Geophysics.
Main content
Project description
The project will focus on the temporal evolution of soil water content in an unsaturated slope in Eidsvoll, Norway. Passive seismic sensors will be used to monitor the hydrological condition of the slope taking advantage of the seismic noise generated by the railway line located at the toe of the slope. The data collected will be useful to understand the hydrogeological behaviour of the soil as a function of meteorological variables. The data will be also used to calibrate a numerical model for real-time slope stability analysis. The student will be involved in the data collection with seismological sensors. The seismological data will be composed of ambient seismic waves from anthropogenic sources (e.g., the nearby railway line). Ambient seismic noise data will be processed for both spatial imaging (e.g., surface wave dispersion inversion) and temporal monitoring (e.g., coda wave interferometry). Seismological results will be integrated with other in situ geotechnical data (e.g., piezometers) to infer spatio-temporal changes in subsurface water content. Poro-elastic constitutive relationships between S-wave velocity and saturation will be investigated in this context.
Proposed course plan during the master's degree (60 ECTS):
GEOV355
GEOV276
GEOV300
Spesialpensum i hydrology (5 ECTS)
GEOV352 Utah
AG335 Svalbard
GE4-305 (HVL Sogndal)
GEOV218
External data
The slope is monitored with several sensors (pore water pressure, volumetric water content, water content and suction, weather station).
Data from these sensors will be available in real time through NGI. A model has been developed by NGI in Geostudio to backmodel
observations and calculate FS. This model will be available to the student. All remaining data will be available through NGI, UiB or open repositories.
Field-, lab-, and analysis work
Passive seismic data will be collected with geophones as part of the project. Analysis will use open-source Python seismological data processing tools. Some visualization and data analysis tools may by created during this project.
