Monitoring of seepages around dams using geophysical methods: a brief review

We present a slightly abridged and adapted translation of the report "Monitoring of seepages around dams using geophysical methods: a brief review" by Nigerian specialists (Kayode et al., 2018) at the 2nd International Conference on Science and Sustainable Development. The proceedings of that conference were published in the corresponding collection of the series "IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science". The series is issued by the publishing company of the British scientific society "Institute of Physics" (IOP) that is now virtually international. The original work, which was used for the translation, is an open access paper under the CC BY 3.0 license that allows it to be distributed, translated, and adapted, provided that the types of changes are noted and the original source is referred to. In our case, the full reference to the original paper (Kayode et al., 2018), which was used for the translation, is given in the end. The slow escape of a liquid or gas through a porous material or small openings is called seepage. It is a process of seeping in soil engineering whereby water in soils move. Seepages often pose a grave problem in building foundations and also a common problem in earth dams (dams are structures built to retain water/fluild) due to abnormal or excessive leakage. Seepage through or around dams have been responsible for most dam failures. Dam failures are usually catastrophic with many fatalities and causing the destruction of infrastructure and properties. Therefore, monitoring of seepage through and around dams becomes a necessity to maintain dam stability. This paper reviews the geophysical techniques which have been considered for the monitoring and control of seepages around dams. The main field of application of this investigation is subjected to site characterization and foundation quality assurance.