Around the world today, over 1 billion people cannot find enough clean water to meet their most basic needs.  According to the United Nations, this “global water crisis” will dramatically worsen in the coming decades.  The earth holds sufficient water supplies to sustain our growing populations, but we must innovate better ways to tap, manage, and safeguard those supplies.

Given this critical need, the scientific team at Willowstick Technologies is immensely proud to have developed a revolutionary water mapping system known as AquaTrack™.

AquaTrack uses the magnetic fields created from electrical current flow to characterize water systems deep beneath the surface of the earth.  It then generates maps of those systems, providing invaluable information to those trying to improve their understanding of the local hydrogeology, remediate subsurface pollution, diagnose the problem of reservoir seepage, and more.

The System

AquaTrack electrodes are placed anywhere they make direct contact with the groundwater network.  This can be through springs, existing wells, or exploratory drill holes. The electrodes then charge the network with a low voltage electrical current.  This current will flow through the water, gathering in areas of greatest concentration.  As it snakes its way throughout the network—over an area of up to 1,000 acres—its sends out a magnetic message signaling key data about the groundwater, such as its location and shape.

The trick is to accurately capture and analyze that signal. AquaTrack accomplishes this by relying on the transformer theory. This theory holds that when a charged coil is positioned near a second coil, that second coil picks up the emitted magnetic field of the first.  The connection of water, wire and electrode forms the first coil; the AquaTrack receiver is designed to serve as the second.  True to the transformer theory, the receiver accurately registers the magnetic field of the electrode loop. The field data is then filtered through a series of expertly designed controls, thus ensuring the reliability of the data from which the AquaTrack maps are rendered.

Willowstick

The AquaTrack system incorporates a variety of devices, each carefully selected to play its role and all smoothly incorporated to the whole: Three magnetic sensors, oriented in orthogonal directions, receive the signal. A Campbell Scientific CR1000 data logger collects, filters and processes the sensor data. A Global Positioning System (GPS) instrument locates and maps the field measurements. And a Windows-based, Allegro CE handheld computer couples and stores the GPS data with the magnetic field data. All of this equipment is tightly integrated and mounted on a single surveyor’s pole, which makes its easily portable to even the most remote and inaccessible locations.

The Advantages

The most basic water-investigation technique is exploratory drilling. This is a hit-or-miss process of simply sinking a shaft to see if it intersects with water. This procedure is time consuming, expensive and environmentally traumatic—ill suited for both developing nations and ecologically sensitive locations.  Until now, the alternatives were a variety of geophysical approaches such as resistivity surveying, which uses surface electrodes to charge the ground, measuring the resistance encountered by the electricity to determine where water is most likely to be found.  These technologies enjoy certain advantages over exploratory drilling, but they are only effective at relatively shallow depths or are limited by other factors that often render the data inconclusive.

In contrast to these, the AquaTrack technology involves a minimally invasive procedure, which returns exceptionally accurate images from great depths (> 1 km).  It is quick, inexpensive and environmentally benign.

The technology has proved extremely versatile.  In early 2006, it was able to chart the seepage paths under a number of leaky dams in northwest England.  This information, which traditional mapping methods had proved incapable of providing, helped conserve a highly valuable resource and protect the general public.  In December 2005, AquaTrack determined the relationship between a disappearing stream in Pennsylvania and the abandoned coal mine shaft that lurked beneath the stream bed.  It also has the capacity to delineate the pollution plume of contaminated groundwater, locate geothermal resources and accomplish a variety of other imaging tasks.

The Update

The AquaTrack system was substantially reworked in March of 2006 to improve on its existing design.  The original instrument box, constructed of aluminum, was replaced by a new box crafted out of a PVC material.  This change enhanced the instrument’s sensitivity to the magnetic field and reduced the overall weight of the equipment.  The instrument programming has also been altered to take more readings at shorter intervals, thus producing more accurate, higher quality maps.  To improve safety and avoid the small extant risk of electrical shock, a ground fault interrupter has been included as part of the AquaTrack system. Also of note are Willowstick’s improved capabilities to produce three-dimensional models of ground water systems and to achieve real-time characterization.

Willowstick

As a result of these modifications, the latest version is significantly more effective and safer than the original design.

Willowstick Technologies takes its name from the ancient practice of using the branches of willow trees to locate subsurface water.  We have come a long way since those days; satellite locators, handheld computers and other innovative technologies based upon sound physical principles have replaced magical divining rods.  But the quest remains largely the same: to make the most of the precious water lying hidden under our feet. AquaTrack’s remarkable ability to peer beneath the earth’s surface marks the latest step forward in our historic effort to understand the planet’s water resources.

Company Background

Willowstick Technologies is a leading provider of next generation, subsurface water mapping services. We have developed a patented geophysical technology, known as AquaTrack, that efficiently maps, tracks, and monitors groundwater resources.

In addition to our AquaTrack technology, we are also capable of employing traditional geophysical technologies such as: Self Potential, Electrical Resistivity including our unique RaMPS methodology, magnetics, electro-magnetics and gravity.

Willowstick was formed in June 2004 when Amp Capital Partners, a venture capital firm focused on renewable energy and natural resource projects, acquired a controlling interest of the AquaTrack Division of Sunrise Engineering. The AquaTrack Division of Sunrise Engineering was formed in 2001, when Dr. Jerry Montgomery and Rich Montgomery, the co-founders and inventors of the AquaTrack technology joined Sunrise.