We present the results of three different seismic experiments designed to develop and evaluate the use of 3D Ultra Shallow Seismic Reflection for high-resolution near-surface imaging. A feasibility study and the first implementation of a 2D portable geophone mount for fast and cost-effective ultra-shallow 3D seismic data acquisition are discussed. The portable geophone mount is made out of an anelastic base with a frame and an array of 72 geophones spaced with an interval of 0.25 m both in the inline and crossline direction. The array enables acquisition of very high-resolution 3D data cubes with bin size of 12.5¿12.5 cm and wavelets of 350Hz. The time for re-planting the 72-channels portable geophone mount is about 5min in the field. Thus, we show that high-resolution near-surface 3D images can be obtained fast and in a cost-effective manner. This has the potential of providing effective solutions for many geotechnical and geoenvironmental applications. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union