An investigation of the distribution of saturated hydraulic conductivity uisng the hydraulic tomographic technology

Traditional aquifer tests and analyses yield transmissivity estimates that are normal averages of heterogeneity over the cone of depression, which evolve with time and depend on the location of the observation well. The estimated storage coefficient is mainly influenced by the geology of the area between the pumping and the observation wells. Hydraulic tomography (HT) has been widely known for characterizing the heterogeneity of hydraulic parameters in the subsurface. In this paper, hydraulic tomography was conducted on a multiple-well system on the campus of the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (NYUST) in Taiwan. A constant-rate pumping test was carried out, and drawdown-time data were collected from ten observation wells. The sequential successive linear estimator (SSLE) approach was applied to interpret data from the transient hydraulic tomography to an estimated unknown hydraulic conductivity (K) and specific storage (S) fields of the aquifer. The inversion distribution K field is then presented and discussed. Keywords: hydraulic tomography, heterogeneity, sequential successive linear estimator, inverse problem