Fully coupled hydrogeophysical inversion of a laboratory salt tracer experiment monitored by electrical resistivity tomography

We perform a salt tracer experiment, monitored by time-lapse electrical resistivity tomography, in a quasi-two-dimensional sandbox with the aim of determining the hydraulic conductivity distribution in the domain. We use sodium chloride as a tracer, together with cochineal red for visual monitoring. The time series of observed resistance for each electrode configuration is characterized by its temporal moments. We invert the mean arrival time of electrical potential perturbations and a few steady state hydraulic head measurements using the fully coupled hydrogeophysical approach recently introduced by Pollock and Cirpka (2010). This is the first application of the approach to experimental data. The results obtained show a reasonable agreement between the estimated hydraulic conductivity field and the pattern of the actual sandbox filling. Using this estimation, a transient simulation is performed to compute the propagation of the salt tracer plume through the sandbox. The latter is compared to pictures taken during the experiment. These results show an even better agreement, indicating that the lenses of different sand types are not entirely homogeneous and some unexpected preferential flow paths are present. We conclude that temporal moments of potential perturbations obtained during salt tracer tests provide a good basis for inferring the hydraulic conductivity distribution by fully coupled hydrogeophysical inversion.