Over several years of engagement in geophysics teaching and research at the University of Copenhagen, I often felt a need for a comprehensive text on applications of geophysical methods to a wide variety of environmental and engineering problems that range from protection of soil and groundwater from contamination, safe disposal of chemical and nuclear wastes, to geotechnical site testing for underground vaults, subways, dams, reservoirs, and power plants.

Hitherto available literature on this subject is almost exclusively in the form of case histories published in the proceedings of various symposia (such as SAGEEP proceedings published by the Environmental and Engineering Geophysical Society) or special issues of some geophysical journals, and a few special volumes published by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. To my knowledge, there is not yet any textbook that adequately covers the area of geophysical imaging of the shallow subsurface from the standpoint of environmental and geotechnical problems. The present work is an attempt to fill in this gap.

The structure of the book is summarized in the following. An introductory chapter outlines the basic principles of geophysical methods and their main areas of application in environmental and engineering contexts. The succeeding ten chapters describe all of the principal methods of geophysical surveying, each chapter containing the necessary basic theory, field procedures, interpretation techniques, and examples drawn from case histories. A final chapter is devoted to inversion theory and tomography to help understand the basis of geophysical imaging.