The Relative Importance of Head, Flux and Prior Information in Hydraulic Tomography Analysis

Abstract

Using cross-correlation analysis, we demonstrate that flux measurements at observation locations during hydraulic tomography (HT) surveys carry non-redundant information about heterogeneity that are complementary to head measurements at the same locations. We then hypothesize that a joint interpretation of head and flux data can enhance the resolution of HT estimates. Subsequently, we use numerical experiments to test this hypothesis and investigate the impact of stationary and non-stationary hydraulic conductivity field, and prior information such as correlation lengths, and initial mean models (uniform or distributed means) on HT estimates. We find that flux and head data from HT have already possessed sufficient heterogeneity characteristics of aquifers. While prior information (as uniform mean or layered means, correlation scales) could be useful, its influence on the estimates is limited as more non-redundant data are used in the HT analysis (see Yeh and Liu [2000]). Lastly, some recommendation for conducting HT surveys and analysis are presented.