Steve Melody is a professional water dowser with over 40 years of field experience dowsing for underground water in Australia.
Map Dowsing for Underground Water
Map dowsing is a technique used by some dowsers to detect underground water sources remotely on maps or satellite images of a property. It is used to make preliminary investigations which are followed up by field dowsing to select the most suitable drill site.
There are several benefits of using map dowsing compared with traditional field dowsing. A map dowser can quickly determine if there is any accessible underground water on a property. If no water is available, this saves the dowser from needless on-site searching and the property owner the cost of a dowser’s field audit.
Large properties can take a field dowser a considerable amount of time to cover the entire area on foot and their progress is often hampered by restrictive terrain or groundcover. Map dowsing can reduce the search time on such large properties to just an hour or so. By selecting potentially suitable drill sites in advance of a field visit, the map dowser can proceed directly to them without the need for searching the whole property.
Water drilling is an expensive undertaking and an error on the part of the dowser because of poor judgement can cost their client dearly. In parts of the world like the United States, bores are routinely drilled to depths of 500 feet. If the result is a dry hole, the landholder will suffer a large capital loss and still have no water. Dowsers must adopt the attitude that they cannot be irresponsible with their client’s money. Map dowsing is a valuable strategy dowsers can use to minimize the risk of financial loss by their client.
Making Risk Assessments
Map dowsers can access information that is available beyond the boundaries of the property to be dowsed, providing them with a detailed picture of the underground water distribution and water quality characteristics in the area. This information, not normally accessible by field dowsers, assists them in conducting risk assessments and making sound judgements that result in a high probability of drilling success.
Establishing a bore that flowed at the time of drilling is no guarantee that it will continue to be productive during droughts when demand on aquifers is high, but aquifer recharge doesn’t occur. Flowing bores that later become dry bores are often poorly sited by the dowser. Map dowsing provides the dowser with a global perspective of conditions below the surface of a property and its surrounds. This allows them to choose drill sites less likely to fail in droughts when it is critical for landholders to have a guaranteed water supply.
In my area, conventional field dowsers have a rate of success averaging 60%. However, drillers employing dowsers who utilize the map dowsing technique often attain a strike rate over 95%. My own record through using map dowsing exceeds 99%.
The Mechanics of Map Dowsing
In field dowsing, the dowser detects interruptions in subterranean rock strata that could contain water with the dowser registering a dowsing reaction from their instrument when they are directly above such areas. When a dowser utilizes map dowsing, they detect the same locations as a field dowser without having to be on site. The mechanism of how a map dowser achieves this feat is not yet understood and consequently, map dowsing should be considered as a phenomenon with no current scientific explanation.
Evidence for map dowser efficacy does not currently meet scientific standards. However, the extraordinary accuracy of map dowsers in repeatedly detecting scarce water sources from considerable distances cannot be explained by chance, demonstrating that map dowsing deserves scientific investigation.
When map dowsing, I believe that the signal I receive from a distant subterranean interruption enters my body through my heart chakra which is located in the lower half of my sternum. If I completely cover my heart chakra with my hand, I do not register any signal from a remote site with this same lack of response occurring when I am field dowsing. Once a signal has been received, it is interpreted by my subconscious brain which communicates with my conscious brain through the ideomotor effect causing body movements that are not under my conscious control. There is also a range limit involved in map dowsing as I am unable to detect any signals coming from areas more than about 800 km away.
How I map dowse
I begin by finding the property to be dowsed on the Queensland Business website – “Bore reports” which shows the property on a satellite image which has been overlaid by the property boundaries and the location of bores in the area. Examples of these modified satellite images can be seen in the two figures below.
During the dowsing process, I ask questions that tell my subconscious brain what I want it to find out. It responds via the ideomotor effect causing involuntary movements of various body parts that my conscious brain can comprehend.
To start, I ask if there are any aquifers or underground streams within the property boundary. If there are, my head will nod and if not, it will shake. I register a count of the number of underground streams on the property on my fingers and search for their location by moving the tip of a pen along the property boundary. It stops automatically under the influence of the ideomotor effect when I locate one. I track streams in both direction from my start point to see where they terminate and where the aquifer that supplies them with water is located. Once I find the aquifer, I establish its boundaries.
I print off a map of the property being dowsed and its surrounds and then mark on it the locations of all the streams and aquifers I find as shown in the figures below. Following this, I mark the current location of the water within each stream on the map. When the water is not present at the terminal end of the stream, this often indicates that the stream is sloping upwards from the aquifer. During droughts when water levels in aquifers fall, the water in sloping streams retreats towards the aquifer, potentially causing a bore to go dry. To establish the slope of streams, I hold out my left arm horizontally and with my right hand move my pen along the stream’s location on the map starting at the low end.
Next, I research what information is available about existing bores in the area by accessing data on the website listed above. This site shows bore locations and bore characteristics such as depth, flow rate and water analysis. I am particularly interested in bores which draw water from the same aquifer as the streams I have detected on the property being dowsed as water quality and stream depth will be similar. I eliminate any streams from selection for drilling if the salt content in the water is too high.
Finding the Right Spot
My next task is to evaluate all remaining streams and select the one that will most likely result in drilling success. I gauge the width of streams using my hands as a measure and combined with the probable depth of the streams, determine if the driller is likely to intercept them when drilling. I try to select a stream where the water is currently at its terminal end to increase the chance that a bore drilled into it will still flow in dry times. Where the water is not at the stream’s terminal end and there are no alternative streams to choose from, I see how close a bore could be drilled to the aquifer that supplies the stream with water. The size and location of aquifers is also important. I prefer to select streams supplied by aquifers that are large and underlay bodies of permanent surface water that store runoff water from extensive water catchment areas.
After choosing the most suitable underground stream to be drilled, I select several suitable drill sites along its length and mark these on the map. I then look for botanical or geological features close to these sites that will act as reference points when I later conduct a field search. If the areas near my selections are devoid of reference points, I record the GPS coordinates for each location.
Once I am satisfied that there is a high probability of drilling success, and the bore will be productive into the future, I contact the landholder and organize a field visit. Here, I locate my preferred drill sites using my reference points or GPS coordinates along with my dowsing rod. I then choose the drill site that will produce the most water, but which is also in a user-friendly location for the driller while meeting the landholder’s needs.
I have included two case studies below that demonstrate how I apply the map dowsing concepts described above.
Case Study Number 1
I was contacted by a client who was considering purchasing the rural property located in the top left-hand corner of Figure 1 shown below. The current property owners relied on bore water for their water supply as harvesting rainwater from the roofs of buildings was not an option due to the high risk of pesticide contamination of the water, the result of aerial spray drift originating from nearby farms. Two of the three bores on the property (bores 1 and 2) had gone dry and the third one (bore number 3) was suffering from a low flow rate. Multiple bores had been drilled in the area, and their locations are shown by blue markers that resemble the shape of paddle pops.
The client was seeking my advice on whether they should purchase the property, and if they did buy it, where a suitable location would be to drill a reliable bore.
I detected two streams on the property and two on the adjacent farm and tracked these back to a single aquifer located on the southern side of Miller’s Lane. I was able to detect the current location of the water in each stream and determine that four of the bores that had been drilled on the distal ends of these streams had gone dry. This was because all the streams were sloping upwards from the aquifer once they turned towards the north and the water level in the aquifer had fallen causing the water to retreat within the streams.
Appraising Possible Locations
I recorded all the information I had accessed on the map in Figure 1, which allowed me to make an appraisal of the property. I concluded that during future droughts, there was a high probability that the third bore on the property would go dry when the water level in the aquifer would fall. Should the need arise for another bore to be established, I marked a potential drill site on the map that was as close as possible to the aquifer.
My conclusion was that this property could prove to be a poor investment for my client because of uncertain water security during dry times and the potential future need to outlay capital to establish another bore.
It can be seen from the information on the map that without being able to access information from beyond the property boundary, my ability to see the bigger picture would be restricted. This would prevent me from conducting a thorough risk assessment and providing my client with a well-reasoned conclusion about the long-term availability of water on the property.
Case Study Number 2
A sugar cane farmer contacted me about establishing a bore on his farm shown on the lower left-hand corner of the map in Figure 2. The bore had to have water with an acceptable salt content, and the flow rate needed to operate a travelling irrigator.
By map dowsing, I found four streams on the property located at different depths with each stream being supplied with water from separate aquifers. Stream 4 was connected to an extensive aquifer that contained water with negligible salt content, a fact I established by studying the analysis of water from five bores that drew water from the stream on other properties. I marked the location of the streams and three of the aquifers on the map in Figure 2 using the same symbols that can be found in the legend in Figure 1.
The salt content in streams 1 or 2 was unknown, but a bore had been drilled into a short stream that was supplied water by an aquifer that also supplied water to stream 3. The water in this bore was salty, indicating that I should try to avoid accessing stream 3. My best plan of action was to ensure that stream 4 was intercepted during drilling so that its fresh water could dilute any salty water from the other streams.
As can be seen in Figure 2, I determined that there was water in streams 1 to 3 at the terminal end of each stream. These three streams were initially level and then sloped downwards at an angle of about 15 degrees. This was a positive finding as this degree of slope would increase the hydraulic pressure in the bore and reduce the risk of the bore losing its water supply during dry times. Stream 4 also contained water at its terminal end.
Which Aquifier Might Run Dry?
My assessment of the aquifers supplying streams 1 and 2 showed that they were unlikely to be adversely affected during periods of reduced rainfall. The aquifer supplying stream 2, while relatively small, was located below a permanent water source that had not been shown to go dry in the past 30 years. The aquifer supplying stream 1 was massive, its boundaries extending far beyond what is shown in Figure 2. It was overlain by multiple bodies of permanent water including a large swamp. The water source for both aquifers came from an extensive catchment area.
I went to the farm and after completing a field survey, I identified that there were two sites that could be drilled to access stream 4 as well as streams 1 and 2 or 1 and 3. I chose a drill site that could intercept streams 1, 2, and 4 thus avoiding stream 3 and determined that there was a high probability of drilling success with a moderate risk that the water would be too salty. There was minimal risk that the bore would go dry during a drought.
The site was drilled and the driller struck the three streams I predicted would be intercepted. The bore yield was 15 500 gallons per hour (about 70 000 L/hr) which was enough to operate a travelling irrigator. Stream 1 contributed the most to the total flow volume and was obtained from a honeycomb of fractured basalt rock about 30 feet thick. The combined salt content of the water was well within the acceptable range to grow sugar cane.
This case study highlights how valuable map dowsing is in providing a large body of information that a dowser can use to make informed decisions about the dowsing process.
Conclusion
Map dowsing has many advantages compared with traditional field dowsing and results in the efficient use of the dowser’s time and the landholder’s capital. The wise application of the information map dowsing makes available to the dowser results in a significant reduction in the number of dry bores being drilled.
The true value of a map dowser is their ability to gather enough information to determine the location of drill sites that will result in the establishment of productive and reliable bores with such sites being the best available on the property.
About the author.
Steve Melody is a retired research scientist and college lecturer, science writer and veteran professional water dowser with over 40 years of field experience dowsing for underground water in Australia. He conducts an annual dowsing school and offers courses at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels.
