Assessing the challenges of viability of borehole through the extraction of lineaments from aeromagnetic data within a hostel at Air Force Institute of Technology, Kaduna, Nigeria

Abstract

The study area has received little attention from scholars due to being within a military facility. The Institute is relatively young, thus undergoing development including but not limited to providing portable water supply. However, boreholes are the primary source of water supply. Four of the nine boreholes sunk within the hostel failed and there’s no published work looking into the potential reason for the failure. The aeromagnetic data of the study area were subjected to an edge-detecting technique, the second vertical derivative, to reveal lineaments within the study area. The lineaments represent structures like faults, fractures, and other features that could act as secondary porosity in the aquifer. Moreover, the Euler depth technique was also applied to determine the possible depth of the lineament. A NE trending lineament was mapped around the boreholes within the hostel. The depth of the lineaments around boreholes is about 300 m deep suggesting the area may not be viable for sinking a borehole, the cost of drilling to that depth will be huge.