KALAMAZOO, Mich. — FOX 17 reporter Julie Dunmire saw posts on social media Monday morning, all with the question: "What is that?"
"That," referring to videos captured of a helicopter carrying a large hexagon across the Kalamazoo-area.
She found out that the City of Kalamazoo put a press release out about this to answer people's questions.
Still, people couldn't help but wonder about what was flying low above, hauled behind a helicopter.
So Julie took a drive north to the Plainwell Municipal Airport, to meet with experts. She learned it's a mechanism that's used to detect aquifers beneath the earth's surface.
"It's just like looking for coins in your backyard," Jared Abraham, of Wyoming-based Aqua Geo Frameworks said.
The large hexagon-shaped device can measure up to 1,000 feet beneath the earth's surface to find ground water.
Watch Julie Dunmire's full story:
"Everyone's seen the little hand metal detector. It's just a big metal detector under a helicopter," Abraham said.
The City of Kalamazoo is hopeful the data collected will help them get better tools to understand the groundwater supply.
"We are hoping to have a 3-D, dimensional map of the subsurface, so we can look for all of the aquifers, those are the water-bearing zones inside of the earth, so we can place our production wells in them," Jean Talanda, Water Programs Manager for the City of Kalamazoo, said.
Talanda added that this is a high-tech way to do such surveying.
"So we can feed our drinking water supply, and have a good source of quality water," Talanda said.
