Structure and age of sediments play an important role in determining the sedimentation
of a river. We plan on combining a nondestructive survey on the structure of riverbed and its
effective dating to investigate the soil movements, specifically during flood events.
Here, we applied ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to analyze the sedimentary structure of
a riverbed. At the Ida River in Toyama city, the GPR prospecting with a 250 MHz antenna was
applied to investigate the sedimentary structure down to a few meters depth from the riverbed
surface. After the survey, the sediment of the riverbed was bored into, and the boundary
between sand and gravel, and cobble stones was identified at a depth of 1.4 meters. In the GPR
profile, the difference of reflections was detected at about the same depth, which showed that
GPR prospecting was useful for studying the shallow riverine subsurface sedimentary.
Formerly, very few studies dealt with the age of the riverbed, especially for the flood
sediments. We applied a geomagnetic dating method on the flood sediments found at the
Imaichi archaeological ruin of Toyama city, around the old Jinzu River. The magnetic study
using remanent magnetization successfully revealed that the sediments were formed in 1900-
1950, which suggests a correlation with the 1914 flood event at the old Jinzu River. The
geomagnetic dating method is useful for the past flood events independent from the study by
paleography. We will further improve the efficiency of magnetic dating and GPR prospecting
methods to examine the deposition history of flood events.
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