Improved estimation of hydraulic conductivity by combining stochastically simulated hydrofacies with geophysical data

Hydraulic conductivity is a major parameter affecting the output accuracy of groundwater flow and transport models. The most commonly used semi-empirical formula for estimating conductivity is Kozeny-Carman equation. However, this method alone does not work well with heterogeneous strata. Two important parameters, grain size and porosity, often show spatial variations at different scales. This study proposes a method for estimating conductivity distributions by combining a stochastic hydrofacies model with geophysical methods. The Markov chain model with transition probability matrix was adopted to re-construct structures of hydrofacies for deriving spatial deposit information. The geophysical and hydro-chemical data were used to estimate the porosity distribution through the Archie’s law. Results show that the stochastic simulated hydrofacies model reflects the sedimentary features with an average model accuracy of 78% in comparison with borehole log data in the Chaobai alluvial fan. The estimated conductivity is reasonable and of the same order of magnitude of the outcomes of the pumping tests. The conductivity distribution is consistent with the sedimentary distributions. This study provides more reliable spatial distributions of the hydraulic parameters for further numerical modeling.