Electromagnetic investigation at the proposed al-Salman dam site, southwestern Samawa city, Iraq

الملخص EN

The site is located at about 15 kms from Al-Salman town with an average survey area of 100000 m2.

The area is a part of the southern desert of Iraq which is characterized by semi-arid to arid climatic conditions.

The profiling-sounding electromagnetic measurements, achieved by using EM34-3 device, were carried out along seven traverses set out a cross the studied vally area (proposed as dam axis), which is parallel to each other with (50 m and 100 m) distance interval, of total length at (310 m) where in all these traverses, the space interval of the measauring points is taken as (10 m).

The original total length of these traverses are (1770 m) and (180) points in which the real achievment is (5310 m) in length with (550) totally measuring points.

After analysis and interpretation process, many anomalous regions are marked and observed in which their gathering and joining to each other form two or more anomalous zones.

Such zones can possibly be presumed and interpreted as an expected concealed saturated or empty bodies exist in the area under investigation.

The trend of these anomalies that may relate with the reflected features are in the same direction of the water flow (i.e.

flow direction along the valley).

Finally and according to the EM and the Geo-technique results which done in the site, the weir structure was recommended instead of dam structure.