Identification of karst features using seismic P-wave tomography and resistivity anisotropy measurements

A football stadium with a capacity of a hundred thousand spectators is under construction over a karst terrain, 10 km west of the old town of Istanbul, Turkey. A large cavity of approximately 30 m³ was detected beneath the sports field through a number of boreholes so that a geophysical survey was required to further investigate a portion of the sports field. We utilized seismic refraction tomography and dc-electrical method with rotated Wenner array to delineate zones with solution voids and cavities. Total core recovery (TCR) was 5-15% from boreholes where zones with low velocities were identified through tomographic inversion, whereas TCR values were above 60% in zones with higher velocities. Both low velocity zones in the tomographic images and increasing resistivity anisotropy with depth appear to indicate that the cavity extends toward the west and south at a depth of approximately 8 m, although the southward and westward extension changes in character.