Happy 10th Birthday MIP and LIF!

March 2021 marks the 10-year anniversary since Vertex brought the first Membrane Interface Probe (MIP) and Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) tools into Canada. Thinking back 10 years ago and the humble beginnings of what the state of High-Resolution Site Characterization (HRSC) services in Canada was then to where we are now seems like a generational leap forward in advancing Environmental Site Investigation practices. Early on we recognized this technology as being truly groundbreaking and “the way of the future” for Site investigations. Just think of it: a technology that could detect contamination in the subsurface in real time and delineation plumes on-the-fly! HRSC had only sporadically been used in Canada by non-local contractors up to that point in time, but we decided the potential was there and so took on the challenge of importing these tools into Canada for use on a permanent basis and here we are today still going strong 10 years later!

Since the beginning of our use of HRSC to assist in characterizing sites in Canada, we have kept track of each Site and every centimeter of subsurface profiling that we have completed. To date Vertex has been to over 150 individual Sites across Canada had have completed over 62 km of subsurface profiling with the HRSC tools. We have completed HRSC surveys as far north and west as Whitehorse, YK, to as far east as Goose Bay, NL and even internationally in Saudi Arabia. To look back and see how far we’ve gone (literally and figuratively) with these tools is amazing! In addition to those sites that have been profiled using the HRSC tools, we have completed numerous proof-of-concept studies on samples sent in to us by clients to confirm that the HRSC tools are appropriate for use at their sites before ever stepping on-site. This service continues to this day and are free of charge!

When Vertex started using and providing the HRSC tools we had a relatively straight-forward set-up of one MIP and one LIF tool at our disposal. Over time as the technology improved and new tools came to market Vertex has expanded our “toolbox” to include the Hydraulic Profiling Tool (HPT), the Low-Level Membrane Interface Probe (LLMIP) and the combination MIP/LLMIP and HPT probes (MiHpt/LLMiHpt),which can provide thousands of data points in a single push!  We have also greatly expanded our modeling capabilities to provide 2D and 3D models of the HRSC data to assist in visualization and interpretation. Most recently we customized a UTV to allow these tools to be used at even more remote and otherwise inaccessible sites.

While these tools have now been here at Vertex for 10 years, we still see them as way forward for efficient Site delineation for many years to come. If you would like more information on High-Resolution Site Characterization (HRSC), please feel free to contact us at info@vertexenvironmental.ca.