Caracterización geofísica de zonas de relleno en la costa de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires: estudio piloto en ciudad universitaria

the coast of buenos aires city is located on the southern margin of la plata river estuary. the original morphology of this area was completely changed by fill works. such works began in 1836 and continue until today. the anthropic changes imposed on the coast line configuration generated a great variety of problems in building foundations and infrastructure works due to the heterogeneous composition of the fill materials. considering the ongoing urban development of buenos aires city, the availability of detailed information about fill areas is of vital importance. with the aim of evaluating the suitability of different geophysical methods for the characterization of fill materials and their thickness and areal distribution, in this work we present the results of a pilot study performed in ciudad universitaria. ground penetrating radar (gpr) surveys, electrical resistivity tomographies (eris) and magnetic profiles were carried out. we determined that eris and magnetic methods are appropriate for the research of fill zones, while gpr is not applicable in the studied area due to its intrinsic characteristics. through our surveys we could identify different sectors in ciudad universitaria, which would have distinct thicknesses and nature of fill materials. these results show that geophysical methods would allow the characterization of the fill zones along buenos aires city, and encourage us to continue with our investigations.