title: Hydraulic tomography for detecting fracture zone connectivity.
abstract: Fracture zones and their connectivity in geologic media are of great importance to ground water resources management as well as ground water contamination prevention and remediation. In this paper, we applied a recently developed hydraulic tomography (HT) technique and an analysis algorithm (sequential successive linear estimator) to synthetic fractured media. The application aims to explore the potential utility of the technique and the algorithm for characterizing fracture zone distribution and their connectivity. Results of this investigation showed that using HT with a limited number of wells, the fracture zone distribution and its connectivity (general pattern) can be mapped satisfactorily although estimated hydraulic property fields are smooth. As the number of wells and monitoring ports increases, the fracture zone distribution and connectivity become vivid and the estimated hydraulic properties approach true values. We hope that the success of this application may promote the development and application of the new generations of technology (i.e., hydraulic, tracer, pneumatic tomographic surveys) for mapping fractures and other features in geologic media.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Water Environment and Resources, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387, PR China. haoyh@sxu.edu.cn
authors.forename: Yonghong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hao
authors.forename: Tian-Chyi J
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Yeh
authors.forename: Jianwei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xiang
authors.forename: Walter A
authors.initials: WA
authors.lastname: Illman
authors.forename: Kenichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ando
authors.forename: Kuo-Chin
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: Cheng-Haw
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D055593:Geological Phenomena; D005844:Geology; D014867:Water
chemical_list: D014867:Water