Vertical electrical sounding

Vertical electrical sounding (VES) is a geophysical method for investigation of a geological medium.

The method is based on the estimation of the electrical conductivity or resistivity of the medium.

In order to obtain the apparent resistivity as the function of depth, the measurements for each position are performed with several different distances between current electrodes.

The application of large electrode arrays allows for reconstructing complex 3D structure of geological media (see Electrical resistivity tomography).

In this case, advanced interpretation techniques based on numerical methods can be applied.

Figure 1. Electrical profiling using four-electrode probes in Wenner configuration .
Figure 2. Electrical profiling using four-electrode probes in Schlumberger configuration .
Figure 3. Pole–dipole array profiling.
Figure 4. Dipole–dipole electrode array profiling.