John P. Greenhouse
Environmental geophysics; it's about time
Geophysics: The Leading Edge of Exploration (January 1991), 10(1):32-34

Abstract:
This workshop, the publication later this year of the SEG's three-volume Geotechnical and Environmental Geophysics, and a number of other factors bring home to me the fact that geophysics and "the environment" are slowly discovering each other. More and more small geophysical companies are advertising services to the environmental industries. Geophysicists prowl landfills and tailings ponds with strange instruments. Of course, geophysics has always had to do with the environment in a general sense. This, however, is Environment with a capital "E", the trendy, ecological definition that dazzles our media and politicians. More importantly, this new geophysical direction provides real encouragement amid the overall gloomy career prospects facing would-be geophysicists, a small but bright prospect.