• Economic and Environmental Geology
• /
• v.39 no.4 s.179
• /
• pp.473-483
• /
• 2006

Although application of electrical methods in Korea began with observation of self potentials before World War II, the methods were developed slowly by the beginning of 1980's when a major burst of development activity took place. DC resistivity methods are applied in Korea more to geotechnical problems rather than to environmental ones unlike other developed countries. As with every other branch of technology, the evolving speed of the silicon chip and of streaming data to hard disk has revolutionized data collection and noise reduction processing. The last two decades saw major advances in data collection, processing, and interpretation of electrical data. Development of smooth-model two-dimensional (2D) resistivity inversion is one of the most visible changes to geophysical interpretation of the last 40 years and is now routinely applied to apparent resistivity data. The ability to represent resistivities in section rather than pseudosection view has revolutionized interpretation. Although calculation of sensitivities for general electromagnetic problems require numerous forward modelings, DC resistivity methods can enjoy computational efficiencies if sources and receivers occupy the same position, and previously intractable 3D inversion is now becoming available.