Historically, geophysics has been used to characterize deep exploration targets, such as economic mineralization, oil and gas deposits, or new groundwater resources, in frontier environments that are relatively free of human impact. At the same time, civil engineers, archaeologists, soil scientists, and others have applied the traditional geophysical methods with long-trusted but simple interpretation schemes to detect, classify, and describe buried geological or anthropogenic targets in the shallow subsurface. In recent years however, as the amount of Earth’s land area untouched by human impact has decreased and as the importance of responsible stewardship of Earth’s subsurface resources has increased, a significant body of advances has been made in near-surface applied geophysics techniques and interpretation theory that have caused existing textbooks and monographs on the subject to become outdated.

The present book is designed to bring senior undergraduate and graduate students in geophysics and related disciplines up to date in terms of the recent advances in near-surface applied geophysics, while at the same time retaining material that provides a firm theoretical foundation on the traditional basis of the exploration methods. The plan of the book is to explain the new developments in simple physical terms, using intermediate-level mathematics to bring rigor to the discussion. The sections on data analysis and inverse theory enable the student to appreciate the full execution of applied geophysics, from data acquisition to data processing and interpretation. The material is amply illustrated by case histories sampled from the current, peer-reviewed scientific literature. This is a textbook that students will find challenging but should be able to master with diligent effort. The book will also serve as a valuable reference for geoscientists, engineers, and others engaged in academic, government, or industrial pursuits that call for near-surface geophysical investigation.