Usefulness of flux measurements during hydraulic tomographic survey for mapping hydraulic conductivity distribution in a fractured medium

Using the first-order analysis, we investigate the spatial cross-correlation between hydraulic conductivity variation and specific discharge (flux) as well as its components measured in a borehole under steady-state flow conditions during cross-hole pumping tests in heterogeneous aquifers. These spatial correlation patterns are found to be quite different from that between the hydraulic conductivity variation and the hydraulic head measurement in the same borehole. This finding suggests that a specific discharge measurement carries non-redundant information about the spatial distribution of heterogeneity, even this measurement is collected from the same location where the head measurement is taken. As such, specific discharge observations should be included in the analysis of hydraulic tomography to increase the resolution of estimated aquifer heterogeneity. Using numerical experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the joint interpretation of both hydraulic heads and fluxes for mapping fracture distributions in a hypothetic geologic medium.