Joint inversion of induced polarization and hydraulic tomography data for hydraulic conductivity imaging

Abstract

SUMMARY For accurate modelling of groundwater flow and transport processes within an aquifer, precise knowledge about hydraulic conductivity K and its small-scale heterogeneities is fundamental. Methods based on pumping tests, such as hydraulic tomography (HT), allow for retrieving reliable K-estimates, but are limited in their ability to image structural features with high resolution, since the data from time-consuming hydraulic tests are commonly sparse. In contrast, geophysical methods like induced polarization (IP) can potentially yield structural images of much higher resolution, but depend on empirical petrophysical laws that may introduce significant uncertainties to the K-estimation. Therefore, this paper presents a joint inversion procedure for both HT and IP data, which allows for combining the complementary abilities of both methods. Within this approach, a traveltime inversion is applied to the HT data, while the IP inversion is based on a full-decay time-domain forward response, as well as a reparametrization of the Cole–Cole model to invert for K directly. The joint inversion is tested on a synthetic model mimicking horizontally layered sediments, and the results are compared with the individual HT and IP inversions. It is shown that jointly inverting both data sets consistently improves the results by combining the complementary sensitivities of the two methods, and that the inversion is more robust against changes in the experimental setups. Furthermore, we illustrate how a joint inversion approach can correct biases within the petrophysical laws by including reliable K-information from hydraulic tests and still preserving the high-resolution structural information from IP. The different inversion results are compared based on the structural similarity index (SSIM), which underlines the robustness of the joint inversion compared to using the data individually. Hence, the combined application of HT and IP within field surveys and a subsequent joint inversion of both data sets may improve our understanding of hydraulically relevant subsurface structures, and thus the reliability of groundwater modelling results.